All the Presidents' Ailments
Bodily impediments to presidential leadership.
The Mortal Presidency: Illness and Anguish in the White House, by Robert
E. Gilbert, Fordham University Press, 1998, 353 pages, $39.00 (hardcover),
$18.95 (paperback)
By David Brudnoy
Mention "sick presidents" nowadays and thoughts of satyriasis,
priapism, or "sexaholism" pop into mind. But in this excellently
updated edition of his 1992 book, Northeastern political scientist Bob
Gilbert dwells on matters less compelling to the supermarket tabloids and
of more demonstrably enduring significance: the medical disabilities of
some of our presidents. Dr. Gilbert is a judicious student of the presidency
and his book is of landmark status.
Requisite (though somewhat dry) data open the book, and one learns that
while members of Congress tend to live longer than the average American-hello,
Strom Thurmond-presidents tend to die sooner. It's a nasty job, perks notwithstanding,
and the toll it has taken from George Washington through Richard Nixon
is demonstrable.
Two early chapters introduce us to America's most admirable (to my mind)
twentieth-century president, Calvin Coolidge, and to Franklin Roosevelt.
Silent Cal died fifteen years earlier than the average among his peers,
but Gilbert stresses not so much his short life (60.5 years) as his inconsolable
grief owing to the death of his beloved sixteen-year-old son, Calvin Jr.,
from, of all things, a toe blister that developed while he was playing
tennis wearing sneakers but no socks. Coolidge had assumed the presidency,
upon the death of the hapless Warren G. Harding, energetic and fully involved
with his job, but trod morosely through the election of 1924 and thereafter
descended into a laconic four years that belied the exuberance of his brief
period completing Harding's term. Coolidge was a broken man. We think of
presidential illness in contexts other than depression, and yet here was
a president so depressed by this catastrophic loss that his administration
was indelibly marked by it. Coolidge's sadness was America's benefit: a
presidency that didn't much oppress us.
FDR, who lived 12.4 years fewer than his actuarial cohort, is the subject
of more studies than anyone can read. Everybody knows of his gallant overcoming
of what would have put lesser men to pasture. Everyone is aware that Roosevelt
wanted, and his minions and the press helped him achieve, an image of robustness
despite his crippling disability. Some-though certainly not those who have
delved even an inch below the surface-may be unaware of how grievously
ill Roosevelt was during his third term. In our day, no president in FDR's
condition could have been nominated for a fourth term (even had the Constitution,
subsequent to his death, not forbid more than two elected terms). In his
superb final chapter, Gilbert proposes "Prescriptions" for contending
with presidential disabilities. We need no further reminder than the Roosevelt
history of just how much needed those prescriptions are.
The bulk of this book discusses the postwar presidencies. Dwight D.
Eisenhower cast himself as a paragon of good health, saying, in 1956, "Rarely
have I known any time in my life when I had to be concerned about my own
physical feeling outside of flu or cold or something like that. I have
been one of those fortunate creatures of good health." Not so, Gilbert
shows. Ike was, in fact, beset by illness all his life. These sicknesses
long antedated his heart attack and other woes during his eight years in
office.
Throughout his book the author brings to light disabilities that will
be news to most readers. Given John F. Kennedy's nearly lifelong frailness,
he never should have been considered for, much less elected to, the presidency.
Like his current successor, who affects an adulation of him, JFK was grotesquely
irresponsible in pandering to his carnal appetites. (Bill Clinton's nauseating
Kennedyesque behavior is not of concern to Gilbert, who, in my radio interview
with him during the early frenzied weeks of the Monica Lewinsky episode,
seemed at some pains to shove such stuff aside-as, in the book, he has
other aspects of Kennedy's life in mind.)
Here was a man, as his brother Robert put it, of whom "at least
one half of the days that he spent on this earth were days of intense physical
pain." But with the connivance of his courtiers and more than one
compliant Dr. Feelgood, JFK sailed merrily along, the supposed picture
of robustness-"vigor" being the cutesy term for the president
and his inexhaustible array of touch footballplaying relatives. One
reads of Kennedy the illness-prone man and one can never again easily confront
the hagiology of his biographers.
Lyndon Johnson "was stricken [by illness] at almost every key moment
of his political career as he ascended the ladder of power"-appendicitis,
pneumonia, nervous exhaustion, depression, kidney stones, and heart attacks,
for starters. Had he thought more carefully about his own condition, he
would not, in fairness to America, have sought the presidency in 1960 or
taken the vice presidency then or run for election in 1964. And LBJ died
nearly ten years earlier than the average of those Caucasian American males
born in the year of his birth.
Richard Nixon, who is only briefly mentioned in Gilbert's book, survived
his near-fatal illness shortly after his presidency ended in disgrace and
died 7.3 years later than his cohort. Gerald Ford plays golf and appears
ready to do so for decades more. Ronald Reagan, whose survival from what,
give or take a millimeter, would have ended his presidency in its opening
months, now lingers-physically seemingly hearty, as his son Michael told
me in several conversations-but beset by the heartbreaking Alzheimer's
that has robbed him of much of what we generally think of as a "good
life." George Bush happily bounces along, that yucky, unfortunate
keeling over his supper in Japan a onetime event. Of Clinton, who is still
a pup compared with the presidents featured in this book, time will tell.
Gilbert's final chapter is terrific: an examination of the strengths
and weaknesses of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, centered on a panoply of
well-reasoned objections to its vaguenesses and concrete proposals for
contending more wisely with presidential disability. The Mortal Presidency
is not merely a tome for scholars; it reads like a juicy novel-that's not
faint praise-and helps any thoughtful reader ponder, intently and informedly,
the matter at hand.
David Brudnoy, a history professor at Northeastern from 1966 to 1970,
teaches journalism at Boston University and is WBZ Radio's evening talk
host and a WBZ TV commentator.
No-Nonsense Marketing: 101 Practical Ways to Win and Keep Customers
By Victor H. Prushan
John Wiley & Sons, 1997
With dry wit and straight talk, Prushan, who earned an MBA from Northeastern
in 1969, tells everything he knows about surefire marketing techniques.
The founder and head of VHP Associates, a California marketing consulting
firm, Prushan cites examples from his own experience. He offers advice
on dealing with competitors, developing a good marketing plan, finding
markets and customers, developing and pricing products, and creating a
good sales force. To liven things up, Prushan peppers his book with short
sections under snappy headings like "Customer Service Isn't Lip Service,"
"If You Can't Innovate, Copy," and "When All Else Fails,
Cold Call."
Merging Language Intervention with Classroom Practices
by Eileen Eisner
PRO-ED, 1998
To help schoolchildren who have language difficulties, Eileen Goldstein
Eisner, MEd'68, has put together a practical manual for speech-language
pathologists and elementary school teachers. In workbook format, the book
illustrates specific activities-poetry, sentence unscrambling, journal
writing, reading aloud, and listen-and-draw activities, to name a few-aimed
at enabling children with immature communication skills, communication
disorders, and language-learning disabilities to participate successfully
in primary or special-education classrooms. The book also lists teacher
resources, reports studies that demonstrate the benefits of merging language
intervention with classroom practices, and describes how to measure intervention
results.
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