Eh. I dunno. I pride myself in being very observant of faces (scarily so, in some cases—I can recognize an actor in heavy disguise based just on their teeth—I notice a lot of things that nobody else notices) and I didn’t think that anything was too amiss with his face. The smirk was more pronounced, but the rest of his face seemed mobile. Nothing jumped out at me as being drastically changed or freaky.
I am not infallable in my scary observant nature so perhaps Bush has something weird going on and I missed it, but no alarms went off for me. He just looked like he was smirking more, and that could have been brought on by a lot of factors.
This is what I get for writing posts during office hours…
It wouldn’t indicate Bells Palsy, but the stance and degree of turn would certainly pull that side of his face making it appear less droopy. Meaning, we thought he was keenly aware of this facial maladjustment…if it were as much.
I Keep Saying - Make 'Em Pee In A Cup! He’s Hepped up on Gofballs, I Tell You!
Seriously. Someone should be checking.
I also think that, given Bush’s penchant for cracking jokes, it would save all of us a lot of trouble if NBC would offer HIM Leno’s job.
You’re assuming the effects of stroke are always major. They’re not. For example, my great-aunt has had no less than five “mini-strokes” and the physical and cognitive effects have been very minor.
A few minutes after the actual debate was over, the same station showed a clip from 2002. The two sides of his face were evenly matched and there was no droop on the left side. I dunno… I noticed it in the first debate too, but it didn’t seem anywhere near this extreme. Both times, I saw the debate on the same (very large) screen. Then, too, my physician friend said that what he saw did not look at all like a drug reaction of any kind. I’ll ask him more about it over the weekend. Let no-one EVER say that I don’t have fun ideas for what to do on dates.
As far as sitting presidents hiding serious medical deficeits, one only needs to go back to Reagan for an example. When he traveled to the group of seven summit in Japan, extraordinary measures were taken. Vacationing in Bali beforehand, he had not only his standard retinue of personal physicians, and a board-certified Cardiovascular surgeon, but a Neuro-surgeon, two Neurologists, and a complete brain surgery team entirely at his disposal. Plus an advanced medical equipment technician with a new, calibrated, external pacemaker in his personal luggage (me). This was in 1986, years before he left office.
Of course, Franklin Roosevelt comes to mind. Can’t imagine hiding a wheelchair nowadays.
I just saw some footage of Bush from 2001. He had less of an exaggerated tilt to his mouth, but it was still there. I just saw some footage of Bush taken today, and both sides of his mouth are mobile, and when he smiled, both corners of his mouth went up equally.
Yep. Just saw some more footage of him on the news as I type. His mouth looked pretty normal. A little bit of a tilt, but nothing too extreme.
I’m not saying that I didn’t notice more of a crooked tilt to his mouth during the debates—just that it didn’t pop out at me as so much worse than the crooked smile he’s always had. Could he have “something” going on? Perhaps. But it doesn’t appear to be anything terribly drastic. He seems to have a pretty close to full range of movement on both sides of his face today.
Oh. Just saw some short footage of George Bush Sr. He’s got a crooked type mouth too. Not too pronounced, but it’s there.
I think most of what everyone’s talking about is this sort of crease at the corner of his mouth that slants downwardly and to his left.
I think this is just a natural crease that is being exaggerated by the effects of aging and gravity.
As people get into their fifties they begin to lose some of their underlying epidermal tissue and their skin begins to get thinner. This causes a certain amount of slack and, in conjunction with gravity, the skin of the face starts to go south (this is the reason people get face-lifts).
One telling characteristic of this slackening is that often two flaps of skin will begin to hang down from under the chin and back toward the throat. These flaps are about as far apart as the knot in a tie, and in fact often seem to frame the knots in the ties of people who have this condition.
I noticed this consequence of aging very much in Bush’s appearance last night, much moreso than in the past.
My guess is he is just aging and that as his facial skin thins and droops, it drags this crease he has always had at the corner of his mouth downward and somewhat to the left.
The left side of Bush’s mouth for some time has been asymmetrical with the right side.
I have seen a number of patients that have a slight asymmetry of their face due to mild paralysis secondary to forceps deliveries or what have you.
He could easily have had a small cerebral vascular accident which might explain his problem with speech and his apparent inability to come up with the spoken word on occasion.
Thirdly, it could be perfectly within normal limits as a great many of us have asymmetry from the right half of the body to the left side…from top to bottom.
Kennedy, too, hid some very serious physical problems. Bush’s face didn’t droop all the time on Wednesday. It was impossible to miss the expression people are talking about here because he did it so often, but I figured it was just an uglier version of the much-maligned scowl from the first debate. Maybe his face looked more tortured because he was trying to pay attention to it.
Actually, now that you mention Roosevelt, it’s quite astonishing just how common it might be for an elected official to be possibly incapacitated and that fact to be hidden from the public:
Woodrow Wilson was basically non-functional after suffering a stroke in 1919.
John Kennedy was under constant medication and medical supervision for his health problems
During the height of his Watergate problems, Richard Nixon was drinking heavily, taking massive amounts of medication, and possibly displaying signs of depression or other emotional problems
During the height of his Lewinski problems, Bill Clinton was possibly displaying signs of depression
Don’t forget Ronald Reagan who was nearly senile while president. People frequently commented on how he would “zonk out” and not pay attention for long periods of time. He was only diagnosed “after” his presidency. Right.
Lyndon Johnson was a serious alchoholic. Basically drank himself to death after his term. Even worse than Nixon.
And I’ve heard that Taft, while president, was suffering from obstructive sleep apnea (blocking of breath during sleep) that resulted in narcolepsy (falling asleep at inopportune times), caused by obesity. After he was appointed chief justice, apparently Taft managed to lose some weight that alleviated the apnea, and resulted in better performance during the day.
And of course George H. W. Bush was on some kind of medication that caused him to lose his lunch at a Japanese state dinner.
It’s frightening to conclude, then, that perhaps the majority (or at least a substantial minority) of our presidents since 1990 have suffered from major health problems that were kept from the public –
Taft, Wilson, F. Roosevelt, Kennedy, L. Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton
Anyone know anything about the others? T. Roosevelt, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, Truman, Eisenhower, Ford, Carter?
I get the impression that T. Roosevelt, Ford, and Carter were quite healthy.
