The Lengths Presidents Go To Hide Medical History

By Glenda Westerfield, Esq.

I found the Newsweek article, “Picture of Health” (referenced below), extremely interesting, and I also have empathy. I have never done anything as important as lead a nation, but I do fully understand the concept of having to hide illness and trying to function in a professional setting while on heavy doses of narcotic that it was necessary to have just to be able to stand up. Been there, still doing that. I think the question is, when does it become ones moral obligation to step aside when too sick? I gave a majority of my cases to other attorneys back in March when I came to the realization that I could not in good conscience call myself an advocate if I was taking pills and getting shots just to be able to function at a pedestrian level each day....much less having to do my best at fighting for someone's life and liberty. I was late for court, losing what little hair I had, looked like a walking skeleton, and had judges pulling me to the side asking if there was a problem.

These Presidents made the choices to hide their illness "in the name of the country" but I believe, because once again, been there done that, that there is also selfishness involved. I hid my sickle cell until I could no longer because I wanted to finish college and law school (a dean once asked me why I kept coming back to school if I was ill...not knowing that my alternative was to lay down and die), and then again because I wanted to keep my shiny new law firm job, and I did not want anyone to doubt that I could do it.

Hell, I hid my illness during my grade school to high school years (many of my friends never knew until I was about grown, but now say that it answers a lot of strange things that they were wondering about me...kinda the "OHHHH, so that's what that was about, makes sense to me now") because I did not want others to think less of me, or ask questions.

I hid my degenerative disks in my back and taught my law classes seated or wearing house slippers to avoid my classes being cut back or taken from me. Some days I was in so much pain, I had to go in the bathroom, cry, compose myself, and come back out to teach.

Even now, I am hiding my cancer from my neighbors to avoid the stares, the "pity parties", the questions, and the barrages of bad potato salad, pies, etc. brought to the house like I am dead (my daughter slipped and told one neighbor who told everyone else, I no longer go outside unless I have to). In the beginning stages of my treatment, I hid my cancer from my kids to keep them from worrying, but also selfishly to shield myself from their worry about me.

Sometimes, like the past few days, I even avoid going to the doctor when I am ill because I get tired of being poked and prodded, but also because unfortunately, due to what I believe can only be racism. If a sickle patient needs meds, they are given a speech about narcotics addiction and not given refills on the scrip (which in turn leads to me having to call the doctor for each refill, which makes me look like a fiend begging for drugs). Whereas, since I have been a cancer patient, I can ask for those same exact drugs with no questions asked, no speeches about addiction or questions about if I really need the meds, and there are refills on the bottle. Both are horribly painful diseases, with some of the same symptoms (which is why I believe my cancer was not caught earlier...the docs all thought it was the sickle cell), yet the one that affects minorities only is the one with the drug addict stigma attached to it. To have an illness is tough by itself, but to admit to it is even harder...

Newsweek Article: Picture of Health

Some U.S. presidents have gone to great lengths to hide their physical and mental illnesses. Is that kind of deception necessary—or even possible today?

By Anne Underwood

Newsweek Web Exclusive

Updated: 2:05 PM ET May 24, 2008

Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, released 1,173 pages of personal medical records this week. Such candor in politicians is a recent development. Dr. Jerrold Post—director of the political psychology program at George Washington University and author of "Leaders and Their Followers in a Dangerous World" (Cornell University Press, 2004)—has studied the history of presidents and their health problems. He spoke with NEWSWEEK's Anne Underwood.

Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: John McCain has been candid about his health. Does that represent a break with the past?

Jerrold Post: There has been increasing pressure for candidates to reveal information that was once considered a personal matter. Today, you have to give up that privacy to run for the highest office.

But even in recent years, not all candidates have been that honest. I'm thinking of Sen. Paul Tsongas, who competed against Bill Clinton to be the Democratic nominee in 1992. That was a cover-up. He indicated that he had had non-Hodgkins lymphoma. He and his doctor attested that, because of his bone-marrow transplant, his prognosis was as good as anyone else's. But at the time the statement was made, he had already had a recurrence of the cancer that wasn't made public. That kind of information needs to be revealed.

The public is demanding more information today. But are people also more forgiving, now that better treatments exist?

Yes and no. Part of the distinction has to do with what kind of illness it is. Dwight D. Eisenhower had a heart attack in 1955, an abdominal operation in 1956 and a stroke in 1957. People were sympathetic after the heart attack, because it was clear that it was mild and he would survive it. But the stroke, which temporarily affected his speech, raised the specter of a president who was unable to communicate. People look to their leaders for wisdom, strength and clarity of speaking.

What about cancer?

In France, François Mitterrand was an interesting example. When Mitterrand came to office, he swore that his would be an open presidency. But on his first day in office in 1981, he called in the presidential physician, Dr. Claude Gubler, and told him that his prostate cancer had spread to his bones. Mitterrand solemnly declared, "We must reveal nothing. These are state secrets." He led for 14 years with the constant and painful companion of metastatic cancer. How could that not have affected his decision making?


What about depression? There used to be such a stigma attached.

Depression is interesting. In 1924, just after Calvin Coolidge's nomination to a second term, his favorite son, Calvin Jr., developed a blister after playing tennis on the White House grounds without socks. He developed septicemia and died three days later [at the age of 16]. This was before antibiotics. Coolidge was called a do-nothing president, but it was probably as a consequence of a severe grief reaction from which he never recovered. After that, he spent 11 hours a day sleeping. His work day shrank. He was irritable and disinterested in affairs of state.

Today much of the country seems to be on anti-depressants. Aren't we more tolerant now?

In 1972, George McGovern [the Democratic candidate] chose Sen. Thomas Eagleton as his running mate. But when it was revealed that Eagleton had had electroconvulsive therapy for depression years earlier, it created a huge uproar. There was such a fear of shock therapy and the possibility of a mentally ill president [if McGovern should die in office] that Eagleton had to step down. Interestingly, Eagleton returned to the Senate, where he had an excellent reputation. We can tolerate a history of depression in the Senate, but not in the highest office.

What are some of the more intriguing cases of presidents who have concealed information about their health?

Grover Cleveland [who served as president 1885-1889 and 1893-1897] was brushing his teeth one morning, when he noticed a lump in the roof of his mouth. He called in his dentist, who summoned a head-and-neck surgeon. The surgeon diagnosed the lump as a carcinoma of the roof of the mouth. Cleveland thought it would cause an economic crisis if the information was released that he had cancer, so during the night, he smuggled an anesthesiologist, nurses, his dentist and the head-and-neck surgeon onto the presidential yacht under the guise of a pleasure trip on the Hudson River. During the trip, they removed the roof of his mouth up to his left eye, and inserted a rubber prosthesis internally. People were suspicious, but it wasn't revealed until 15 years after his death what had happened.

In more recent years, after the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan, how cheered we all were when he waved from his window at George Washington University Hospital. But what people didn't know was that Reagan was only alert for one hour a day. The nightly news regularly showed clips of a vigorous Reagan in good spirits. But in fact, these moments were carefully chosen. When he went back to the White House—Bob Woodward conveyed this vividly in his book "Veil"—he showed only brief intervals of lucidity and vigor. This was only the beginning of the Reagan presidency, but according to Woodward, his aides were afraid it would end up as a crippled presidency, like Wilson's caretaker presidency.

You're referring to Woodrow Wilson after his stroke. In the fall of 1919, Wilson had a disabling stroke while he was on a train trip across the country to mobilize support for his cherished League of Nations. The public knew he was ill, but they didn't know how ill. Only Edith Wilson, chief of staff Joseph Tumulty and his personal physician, Cary Grayson, were allowed to see him. Issues were brought in, and decisions would come out. We talk today about the possibility of having the first woman president, but we effectively already had one in Edith Wilson. After her husband partially recovered, Mrs. Wilson said, "I don't know what you men make such a fuss about. I had no trouble running the country when Woody was ill."

I guess Franklin Roosevelt would be the most famous example of a president who concealed information about his health. His polio was well known—and it humanized this aristocratic man—but the press was respectful. There were only two or three pictures of him in a wheelchair. What wasn't so well known was how ill he was when he went to the Teheran summit with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin in 1943. He came back quite ill. The White House doctor, [Vice] Admiral Ross McIntire, directed cardiologist Howard Bruenn, a Navy [lieutenant] commander, to examine Roosevelt. Bruenn was alarmed at the gravity of Roosevelt's illness. He diagnosed congestive heart failure, hypertension, acute bronchitis and longstanding pulmonary disease. McIntire told Bruenn, you must not tell the president and his family the extent of his illness, and you certainly cannot tell the American public. He issued a reassuring communiqué to the effect that, for a man of his age, Roosevelt was in remarkably good health. But Franklin's son, James Roosevelt, later said he'd never been reconciled to the fact that his father's physicians allowed him to run for a fourth term. It was his death warrant. At the Yalta summit in 1945, Churchill's physician said that Roosevelt looked old and drawn and sat staring ahead with his mouth open. He intervened little in the discussion. He died shortly after the summit of a massive cerebral hemorrhage.

President Kennedy had Addison's disease. Yes, but it was only in Robert Dallek's 2003 biography of John Kennedy that we learned the extent of Kennedy's illnesses, which he concealed and which his family continued to conceal after he was assassinated—colitis, duodenal ulcers, osteoporosis and Addison's disease, which is a life-threatening insufficiency of the adrenal glands, requiring twice daily steroids. By 1950, he had constant back pain from vertebral collapse. From the mid-1950s, he was taking powerful narcotics like Demerol and methadone. He took barbiturates for sleep and tranquilizers for anxiety—as many as eight medications a day. There's some indication that he may have abused amphetamines. Before press conferences, he often required injections in the back to control his pain. Throughout his career, he concealed his illnesses.

If elected, John McCain would be 72 when sworn in. Is age an issue?

The first generalization is that one shouldn't generalize. There are some highly creative individuals who function well into their 90s. Konrad Adenauer [who served as German chancellor until the age of 87] was one. Having said that, the danger is that one may attempt to force a new situation into a template from the past and draw false parallels. With the passage of years, there can also be an increased sense of urgency that makes you want to accelerate the pace of change and fit a political timetable to your own. In China, the Cultural Revolution was related to Mao's realization that his time was short and his desire to fully consolidate the revolution before he died.

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Your Black Life: Race Matters MORE in the ‘Age of Obama’

Race Matters MORE in the ‘Age of Obama’
By: Tolu Olorunda
Staff Writer - YourBlackWorld.com

Reprinted From Black Commentator

“Though not apposite to my present purpose, it is but justice to the fruitfulness of that period, to mention two other important events - the Lutheran Reformation in 1517, and, still earlier, the invention of negroes, or, of the present mode of using them, in 1434.”

-Abraham Lincoln, “Discoveries and Inventions,” February 11, 1859

Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be misled. Race still matters, even in the age of a bi-racial president. In fact, I submit that Race matters more at this transitional period in our multi-cultural society. The presidential campaign of President-Elect Obama sought to vehemently sweep Race-consciousness under the rug, but little did they know, that this stubborn, inextricable faction of our existence would not surrender without a fight. Each time David Axelrod (Obama 2008 chief strategist) felt his campaign had just dodged another Race bullet, the Race assassins would reload for another battle. President-Elect Obama endeared millions of white votes through his desire to run a “race-neutral” campaign, nevertheless, his naïveté only provided comic relief for Black progressives who, unlike Obama, fully understand the intricacy of Race in our society.

Without Obama’s permission, Race resurrected itself early on in the 2008 presidential campaign. It began when White journalists first took it upon themselves to question Obama’s blackness; then followed the – Clinton campaign-sponsored – expose on the possibility of a madrassa-schooled Obama. Subsequently, Obama was painted as a secret Muslim smoker, whose sexism proved uncontainable. In a foreseeable move, Obama’s “outspoken,” “independent” wife would be used as a stumbling block to her husband’s progress. The unpatriotic Michelle “Jezebel” Obama became the goose that laid a thousand eggs for the Obama team’s effort to run a campaign devoid of controversy. In order to assuage the damage wrought by a strong Black Woman’s presence, Sister Michelle would have to undergo a cannibalistic process of image-reorientation, to fit into the mold of an acceptable First Lady. Shortly after, the “gotcha media” would find some legitimate dirt that could reduce Obama to a sheer spectacle. Unbeknownst to 60% of Black folks, they had, all their lives, committed a crime worthy of the death penalty: attended a Black church which advocated self-love, self-control, self-respect, and self-help.

Obama’s attendance at the Black-supremacist, racist, segregationist Trinity United Church of Christ would be the final hurrah of his “Raceless” campaign. With a rare cooperation between ABC News and FOX News in effect, Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright would soon become the “old uncle” who says things Obama doesn’t “always agree with.” The silliness of the fraudulent Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy would gain more steam as the respected theologian sought, hopelessly, to vindicate himself from the fascistic, right-wing media’s attacks on his credibility and integrity. Before long, Obama would feed the food-starved swine, and “denounce” the man who helped mold him from an unsettled bi-racial youth, to a self-confident Black man. Luckily for Obama, John McCain and Sarah Palin had one last surprise for the “disrespectful,” terrorist-enabler.

Some would argue that despite the very nature of the acidic attacks on Obama’s dignity, millions of white voters turned down the offer, and instead, proved willing to accept the moral leadership of a Black man from Hawaii. Some even contend the legacy of the Bradley effect, and its significance in today’s society. Others have unequivocally declared Racism a “myth.” A few have taken it upon themselves to announce the dawn of a “post-racial” society, where everyone has a seat at the table of opportunity and success.

“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” an adage says. It is clear that most White journalists lack the sophistication to address the issue of Race in our society, but possess an egocentric appeal, which relentlessly stifles any accommodation of dissenting voices to their myopic analysis of Race in the 21st century.

Few White pundits are aware that Race is not always a tangible and physical element, per se. It, at times, plays dead, and operates in stealth mode. To combat the sleeping giant (Race), one does not avoid any engagement with it, or initiate a “conversation” – with the hopes that words can mend a 400-year, broken bond. The most effective mode of warfare is an all-out attack, and confrontation, with the most explosive component of society – Race. Princeton Professor and Author of Race Matters , Dr. Cornel West has often decimated the illusions of Race-conversations, as concrete substitutes for embracing reality. In a 1997 Harvard-sponsored Du Bois Institute forum, titled “A Conversation on Race,” Dr. West made plain what few journalists are willing to accept:

“Malcolm X used to say you don’t stab a man in the back nine inches and pull it out six inches and say let’s have a conversation. You start off with dilapidated housing, you start with decrepit school systems, you start with inadequate health care, you start with jobs that don’t pay a living wage… There is a sense of urgency… when you have… 52% of black children not just living in material poverty but psychic emptiness… This doesn’t solicit a conversation… [Imagine] Europe having a conversation about Nazism; they didn’t [have] no damn conversation. We needed to fight.”

Dr. West is hardly alone in his insistence that substantive acts of courage must be mustered if our society is to mature – Race wise. W.E.B. Du Bois, one of Black America’s most celebrated scholars, though known as a staunch advocate of integration, grew tired of the little progress made in the quest to assimilate both cultures, and bridge a gap of unity. Du Bois, just as our present reality begs, was wrestling with the small-mindedness of “illiterate nitwits,” whom he felt perceived the world through a dual-nature prism. Du Bois confronted the question of integration, vis-à-vis education, and how much improvement was being made in the struggle for a collective brotherhood/sisterhood. Richard Wormser’s The Rise & Fall of Jim Crow: The African-American Struggle Against Discrimination, 1865-1954 (Social Studies, History of the United States Series), shows a frustrated Dubois who, in 1934 – whilst still editor of The Crisis – suggested a temporary alternative to the desegregated school system for Black children,

“A separate Negro school, where children are treated like human beings, trained by teachers of their own race, who know what it means to be black, is infinitely better than making our boys and girls doormats to be spit and trampled upon and lied to by ignorant social climbers whose sole claim to superiority is the ability to kick niggers when they are down.”

What Du Bois understood, which many fail to grasp today, is that Race happens to be one of the most underrated influences in society – then, and today. Though 20 years before the historic Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling, Du Bois’s prophetic words were able to travel through time and investigate the future. Lo and behold, civil right leaders would discover, later on, that even after the ruling to desegregate public schools, it would take more than legislations to correct the horror motivated by decades of separate and unequal schooling. Thus, Du Bois’ proposal of a schooling paradigm, in which qualified and concerned Black educators imparted the gift of life unto their pupils, was most apt for a generation taught to hate themselves, and psychologically abused in classrooms where Eurocentric standards of education were considered infallible.

In 1967, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would pick up where Du Bois left off, and give one of his most prophetically-structured, spiritually-furnished, but least-talked-about speeches of his lifetime. King, at this point, was an agitated, frustrated, irritated, scared, courageous, and disturbed King. Unlike the King often celebrated during the month of February, or the third Monday in January, this King had just been hit with a dose of reality. Suffering betrayal from certain comrades and lieutenants (who shall remain nameless), Dr. King was more convinced, at this point, that all that glitters is certainly not gold. Ten days after his most crucial speech, “Beyond Vietnam,” Dr. King, stepped up to the lectern at Stanford University to lay down the gauntlet on what the civil rights movement must represent, if our society is ever to develop beyond the illimitable constraints of Race.

In his speech, Dr. King repudiated the silliness of those who would rather evade the elephant in the room, than engage in a “genuine” fight for equality for all:

“I came to see that so many people who supported morally and even financially what we were doing in Birmingham and Selma, were really outraged against the extremist behavior of Bull Connor and Jim Clark toward Negroes, rather than believing in genuine equality for Negroes.”

King also dispelled the notion that “racial progress” is only calculable by the measures white brothers and sisters take to accept certain elements of Black leadership. Hence, Obama’s triumph over John McCain cannot accurately illustrate the “racial progress” made, if Black folks have voted for White candidates, overwhelmingly, since being granted the right to vote, without any special investigation into their ability to “transcend-race”:

“Racism is... the false and tragic notion that one particular group, one particular race is responsible for all of the progress, all of the insights in the total flow of history.”

As though speaking with a megaphone of the future, Dr. King would address our present reality, with a stern warning against deceptive claims that time can truly solve the problems of racial injustice. King warned against the digestion of the White media’s assertions that the success of President-Elect Obama delineates a “new era,” as time has washed away the old, messy, horrible days of racism:

“I’m sure you’ve heard this idea. It is the notion almost that there is something in the very flow of time that will miraculously cure all evils. And I’ve heard this over and over again. There are those, and they are often sincere people, who say to Negroes and their allies in the white community, that we should slow up and just be nice and patient and continue to pray, and in a hundred or two hundred years the problem will work itself out because only time can solve the problem. I think there is an answer to that myth. And it is that time is neutral.”

In his speech, Dr. King made sure to tackle the cynicism of those who believe legislations are mere paperwork, and devoid of any enforceable power to correct the ills of a racialized society. However, like Malcolm X, Dr. King also understood the degree to which such claims arouse credibility, with numerous occurrences of lynchings, even after the passage of the Civil Rights Bill and Voting Rights Act:

“It’s the notion that legislation can’t solve the problem; it can’t do anything in this area. And those who project this argument contend that you’ve got to change the heart and that you can’t change the heart through legislation. Now I would be the first one to say that there is real need for a lot of heart-changing in our country. And I believe in changing the heart. I preach about it. I believe in the need for conversion in many instances, and regeneration, to use theological terms… But after saying this, let me say another thing which gives the other side, and that is that although it may be true that morality cannot be legislated, behavior can be regulated. Even though it may be true that the law cannot change the heart, it can restrain the heartless. Even though it may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, it can restrain him from lynching me.”

Dr. King, who described the plight of Black folks as synonymous to “impoverished aliens,” made sure to draw a blueprint of true integration, before departing from this imperfect, and often, maddening realm of existence:

“We must come to see now that integration is not merely a romantic or aesthetic something where you merely add color to a still predominantly white power structure. Integration must be seen also in political terms where there is shared power, where black men and white men share power together to build a new and a great nation.”

If President-Elect Obama’s obsession with a man who saw no distinction between Black folks (or Negroes) and properties of iron, or transportation vehicles, is of any significance, it simply suggests that the future of Race matters is one of an imperishable existence. Race cannot be eliminated from a society which was born with it. Dr. Condoleezza Rice, earlier this year, described Race as a “birth defect” of our society. Whether corporate-minded, white pundits highlight this reality or not, it is the duty of Black progressives to make plain, for the masses of our people, the past, present, and future of Race Matters. Long live RACE, but down with racism.