The presidential temper

Not since Manuel Quezon, the Great Kastila, has there been so much literature written about the presidential temper – that of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Ferdinand Marcos never flared up in public as far as I know. He had all his passions and emotions under lock and key, and went through his chores as chief of state like a highly skilled trapeze artist. You thought he would falter and fall but didn’t. Macoy coolly measured his opponents and enemies and slit their throats or brought them to their knees without too much fuss, without exploding. You would say he was cold-blooded.

At a press conference in 1977 highlighting the World Bank-IMF conference in Manila, a singularly rude and obnoxious American correspondent startled the huge audience at the Philippine International Convention Center. The world press was there as were the eminentoes of the World Bank-IMF, members of the presidential cabinet. This correspondent, whose name now escapes me, had the gall to state bolt outright: "Mr. President, they say you are the richest man in the whole of Asia. How did you accumulate your riches? Don’t you feel guilty about it?" Mr. Marcos kept his composure, replied without raising a single decibel in his voice: "You know, that’s the problem when you are president. Everybody kicks you around, and I’ve been kicked around a lot. No, absolutely, that’s not true. I am not the richest man in Asia, far from it."

I was then president of the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines and felt ashamed of the American newsman’s behavior. His conduct was simply not professional. But he was a "visiting fireman" so I kept quiet. The following morning, he sought me out, his eyes flushed, one cheek swollen. He complained that the previous evening, at a well-known nightclub, somebody physically assaulted him. A few well-aimed blows to his kisser busted his lips and out flew two of his teeth. I asked who did it. He mentioned the name of Cipriano (Cip) Roxas. Evidently he wanted me to chastise Cip. "Well," I said, "You must have provoked Cip Roxas" and left it at that. The guy barreled off shaking his head. I congratulated Cip afterwards.

Cory Aquino was almost always unflappable in public and private. Even when she was good and sore and fit to be tied, she never shouted or screamed. I should know. I was her press secretary. We, her cabinet members, fought each other, at times nearly came to blows, and I remember having challenged two of my colleagues to a fist fight. Almost always, she was the arbiter stamping out intramural feuds. But oh yes, twice she almost blew up like a runaway gale – in private. The first was when she could no longer stand the snarling and feuding between her intimates in the Guest House. President Aquino convoked an emergency meeting on the spot, and laid it on the line, her eyes blazing: "If you cannot behave, if you continue to misbehave the way you do behind my back, and even your quarrels land in the press, then hand in your resignations! I will accept them!" Nobody resigned.

Ah, but she did flare up when the late and lamented Louie Beltran wrote in his column that she hid under her bed in her Arlegui residence the night of the August 1987 coup launched by Col. Gregorio (Gringo) Honasan. Louie, a good and colorful writer, indulged too much in hyperbole. Mrs. Aquino never hid under the bed. She couldn’t. It was walled all around and only a cockroach could slither through. The president was mad, mad, mad. There was one thing she was proud of, her courage. The courage of the Aquinos, her late husband Ninoy. At the Guest House, she walked to and fro like a fire engine abruptly changing course. You could almost see smoke whoosh out of her ears, her nostrils, her mouth. Her eyes were livid, fit to bring the chandelier down. She went to the City Hall to file a libel suit, which she won in a lower court and was reversed by the Supreme Court. And that was that.

President Fidel Valdez Ramos was something else. He had a barracks temper, which he eventually managed to control in public. I don’t know if I am privileged to reveal some anecdotes, but I will reveal one. It won’t hurt, Eddie. At one weekly meeting before he formally launched his presidential candidacy, a few members of our advisory group thought we could start "imaging" him. Louie Morales and this writer thought we could begin with his blue-grey cap. So we said he didn’t look good in this cap, not at all presidential. Joe Almonte and Boy Saycon tensed like the rising back of an alarmed cat because nobody ever talked to FVR that way. But we thought he would easily understand. Why not? It was for his own good.

What Louie and I didn’t know was that Eddie Ramos – he was then Eddie to all of us except the generals in the group – loved that cap. Maybe it was a token of good luck, like his blue T-shirt when he jumped into the air upon hearing the premature news that the Marcoses had fled Malacañang. Maybe it was gifted to him by a close admirer. Anyway, that hat almost always stuck to his head like a black spot on a panda’s pate. FVR’s reaction to the suggestion he get rid of this hat was nothing short of ballistic. He took it off and flung it against a wall. He felt we had gone too far, intruded into his personal behavior. "You have the temerity to criticize my cap!" FVR snapped. That was the last time I ever saw him like that. Eddie Ramos learned fast. He eventually took our advice, got rid of that funny cap. Then he became "presidential", keeping a tight lid on his military temper and when he became president at Malacañang, his public conduct was impeccable.

* * *

Not so President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Her emotions are always writ on her face like the surface of the sea. When she smiles, that smile is glorious and girlish, radiant, a dancing wave. When she is miffed, she goes into a sulk, her cheeks sullen like a slow roll of breakers. When she gets sore, the eyes pirouette, the lips curl, the words gyrate. When GMA gets mad, she is a sea in turmoil, her voice shrill like the clash of whistling winds. I don’t’ know why. Her late father Diosdado Macapagal, a president himself, was never that way. She wasn’t that way when we were handling her vice presidential presidential campaign in 1996-97. She was very sweet, to me especially, with a quiet that was that of a fawn getting into a clearing and blinking in the sunlight. Gloria listened most of the time, expressed innate intelligence the few times she talked. That is the GMA I like to remember.

Joseph Ejercito Estrada. Funny but I never really got to know the man at close range. He came into the presidency when I was no longer covering events in Malacañang, no longer a marching, driven, deadline-riveted foreign correspondent when the world was my oyster for 36 years. I don’t’ think he ever liked me and, as a journalist, I paid back the compliment. I have never heard of Erap shouting when already lodged in the Palace, or gesticulating loudly, kicking ass, storming during a cabinet meeting. He loved to sing and scrap, have a good time, belt the bottle during midnight frolics. But Estrada’s presidential temper, if there ever was one, was that of open annoyance and irritation over a media that was always snapping at his heels, dogging him, treating him like a corrida bull with darts and banderillas.

Seth Mydans of the New York Times drew this portrait after a recent interview with Estrada at the Veterans Memorial Hospital where he is detained:

"He didn’t behave like a president and he didn’t look like a president. Slouching, shambling, overweight, his large head sagging with its dyed black pencil moustache, he looked more like a gangster. He was a drinker, a gambler and a carouser and he flaunted it…Up close, though, it is impossible not to like Mr. Estrada – open, vulnerable, without pretension of any kind, ready to accept any visitor as a friend. He seems to be a man without malice and his self-defense lacks bite. ‘Cruel’, he said forlornly, describing his treatment." 

Oh yes, I did interview him once on Firing Line when he was still campaigning for the presidency. He deliberately tried to provoke me, saying he belonged to the non-elite unlike me, always suited and cravated, and he didn’t like my kind at all. I didn’t bite. Well in due time Mr. Estrada as president was "suited" and "cravated." And whenever piqued by his critics or media, his invariable riposte was: "Mag-presidente muna kayo!"

As a last word on presidential temperament, I would like to quote Richard E. Nuestadt, author and acknowledged US authority on statecraft. In his book Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents, he wrote that President Kennedy epitomized a leader who had everything under control, who never allowed pressure to get the better of him even if "he was a man of mood and passion." Neustadt wrote further:

"In his presidential years, his back was almost constantly a source of pain, but he never talked about it. All of this is of a piece with his behavior in a crisis. His control, his objectivity, his humor, and his sense of human limits, those were but expressions of his confidence; its sources must be somewhere in this ground…What did he leave behind him? What was the legacy of his short years? At the very least, he left a myth: the vibrant, youthful leader cut down senselessly before his time."

I wholly agree. In this day and age when the world whirls almost like a tornado out of control, when events explode, a president must have a solid lid on his emotions and passions.

Puñetas were the rage during President Manuel Quezon’s time, but no longer today. You tame a nest of hissing rattlesnakes by looking them coldly in the eye.

If you must, explode only in private.