A Christian Liberal is NOT an oxymoron.

Posted by XT on October 23rd, 2008 in Campaign News

CNN’s Campbell Brown is claiming that the American people have a right to know everything about the health of our political candidates. I’m not so sure.

I think there is a case to be made for it. Ronald Reagan’s announcement of Alzheimer’s in 1994 means that he was likely having memory problemstrouble on a daily basis in at least the closing months of his Presidency. That is not something we want to experience in the White House.

But there is no medical test required by the Constitution. There is not even statement that can be interpreted as the President needing to be legally sane. The closest thing we have is in Section Four of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment:

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

So the President’s fitness for office is determined by the VP and the people directly appointed by the President. That isn’t exactly the most reliable system that could be devised.

But candidates for office? Do they have a duty to tell us everything about them? Do they have to tell us if they practiced safe-sex when they were teens or if they ever had a medical scare of any kind?

I think a case can be made that the President should be forthcoming with all ongoing health issues that may impact his or her actions. But I don’t think we have a right to demand that of someone who is simply a candidate.

Would Woodrow Wilson have been elected if we knew he was going to have a heart attack and/or stroke? Would Franklin Roosevelt have won if he’d had to publicize his bout with polio? Would JFK had been elected if we knew he was addicted to painkillers?

If the answer to those questions is “No” – and it likely is – then the case has to be made that America would have been better served by their opponents’ election. It has to be shown that Kennedy misstepped because of his painkillers, that Roosevelt’s polio made him inept, or that Wilson’s heart forced him to alter his course in office.

Failure to show conclusively that such things matter means that they are, perhaps, better left in the medical file.

Technorati Tags: Campbell Brown

Sphere: Related Content