When Should We Speculate About Politicians’ Health?
By: Savannah Wallace
Tags: Leadership, Election 2020, Health, Politics, Government

When Should We Speculate About Politicians’ Health?

Let’s worry more about politicians’ attitudes toward their health rather than about their particular health issues.

Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash

On September 1st, President Trump posted the following Tweet:

Initially, no one connected the President’s diss to any source. Some media outlets speculated that Trump was referring to excerpts from a new book, Donald Trump v. The United States, that addressed his unannounced, fall 2019 trip to Walter Reed Medical Center. Then someone tracked down a Tweet from CNN Political Analyst Joe Lockhart, who questioned whether Trump had a past stroke. Even with this context, given the extra detail Trump provided in the above Tweet (e.g. specifically referencing Walter Reed, writing “mini-strokes” instead of “stroke” in the post), many political commentators theorized that Trump is trying to end the discourse surrounding his fitness for the Presidency by disclosing some real details about his health but stating that they are lies.

Ever since Trump announced his campaign for President in 2015, every armchair psychologist has speculated about his health. In their defense, he has provided them with a lot of material. Before the 2016 election, he dictated a letter signed by his doctor that said he would “be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” He recently bragged about doing well on an exam that he claimed showed his incredible intelligence; it is used to monitor cognitive deficits in people with neurological conditions. And besides proposing alternative reasons for that Walter Reed visit, we constantly analyze Trump’s behavior and speech patterns for symptoms of disease.

Partially in response to the discourse, partially because the President loves to nag, Trump has accused both of his Presidential competitors of being physically or mentally unfit for office. In September 2016, Hillary Clinton had pneumonia and fainted during a ceremony commemorating 9/11. Images from that incident provided the Trump campaign with material to promote conspiracy theories about Clinton being secretly ill. Now he accuses Joe Biden, someone only three years older than him, of being unfit for office because of his age. The Trump team has also advanced a theory that Biden may have a neurological disorder. Because of the conjecture, and some justified concern about his age, Biden recently released a medical report to the public.

Disability rights laws have helped destigmatize employees’ physical and mental health issues in many American workplaces. It is thus surprising that speculation about others’ health still plays as major of a role in national politics as it did in the 1930s, when FDR hid his paralysis from the public because he didn’t want Americans to perceive him as “weak.”

Doesn’t it seem like a low blow to attack a politician for their health — something they cannot always control — instead of for their moral values or proposed policies or past actions? Even if some candidates have health issues, if they receive necessary medical care, they should be able to perform their jobs well. Attacks on the health of major political figures may also stigmatize some health issues among the public again, making it more difficult for millions of people to receive equal opportunities and treatment.

But we should have some knowledge of politicians’ mental and physical fitness, particularly our elected leaders, as they are supposed to serve the public interest. And we pay their salaries. If leaders do not have the capacity to do their jobs well, even while undergoing treatment, they are failing us.

When speculating about leaders’ health, we must then separate the illnesses themselves from the discourse and focus on the leaders’ responses to their illnesses. Two questions should guide our thinking:

Does it seem like the illness is impeding the leader from getting work done?

How does the leader publicly discuss their health?

The first question would best be addressed by leaders’ staff or inner circles. Nevertheless, we can still get some answers to them from analyzing leaders’ behavior during public appearances. We can observe their attention span or adherence to social norms. One might want to examine leaders’ events schedule as well to see if they have changed their work load. Regarding the second question, we can analyze the tone leaders use when discussing their health. Are they boastful or grateful? Do they rarely mention their health or, on the opposite side of the spectrum, do they talk about it in great detail? We may also want to check whether their claims seem true. In an extreme example, if a leader said they never got sick you would know they are lying, as most people catch bacterial or viral infections regularly.

Shinzo Abe, the Prime Minister of Japan, announced his resignation last week after his ulcerative colitis symptoms got significantly worse. He stated during a press conference: “I cannot be Prime Minister if I cannot make the best decisions for the people.” He has a long, very public history with colitis. During his first term as Prime Minister in 2007, he also resigned because of the severity of his symptoms. When he assumed the position again in the 2010s, the public trusted him based on the reasoning he provided for the first resignation to assume that his colitis wouldn’t affect his decision-making abilities during his second term. His behavior should serve as a model to all leaders. Not only did he openly recognize the restraints placed on him by the illness, but his response humanized him to his people. The Japanese weren’t concerned about his health because they trusted him — they expected him to be relatively honest.

In contrast, Trump seems to think he is invincible. On all topics, he hates to admit to any weakness, and frequently spreads lies when there is verifiable evidence of the truth. So when he talks about his health, he speaks in extremes. The discourse about his health persists because we interpret all of his statements as exaggerated or false — that is what we expect. And we have many pieces of evidence that show the President exhibiting weird behavior in public. When we cannot trust a leader to tell the truth about their health, we should have an outside institution test their capacity to serve. Former President Jimmy Carter once recommended that, besides getting evaluated by the President’s Doctor (who is a member of the US military), an independent team of doctors should also assess the President’s health to make sure their medical results are objective.

With the American Presidential election just two months away, let’s try to add more nuance to the discourse about both candidates’ physical and mental fitness. It is not wise to base your vote on perceptions of health, but you can and should critique politicians’ attitudes toward their health. After all, the way politicians address their health may be indicative of their approach to leadership too.