I think it’s a given that he wouldn’t be able to hide his disability. I wonder, would he want to? Has “disability pride” advanced enough that he’d be “proud” for lack of a better word, of his disability, and overcoming it?
I think he’d want to show it off, so to speak.
No reason to try to hide it today.
if he were alive today he would be very old.
i think he would be accepted.
If he were alive today he might not be disabled. If he were alive and disabled, though, he would have had to embrace it: the press helped him keep his condition quiet when he was president and that wouldn’t happen today. I’d like to think he would have embraced it anyway because fortunately, society’s views of people with disabilities has come a long way.
He’d be clawing at the lid of his coffin.
I tend to agree with this view. BTW, I know his condition wouldn’t be disabling now, and about the media’s complicity in hiding it.
But I think society still has a long way to go. People may not openly discriminate against physically disabled people. But they apparently don’t choose to vote for them. The partial exception are those who are disabled as a result of military service.
According to the 2000 Census, 19% of the people in the United States have a physical disability - 12% have a serious disability. There are 585 senators, representatives, and governors in the country. Ten percent of that number would be fifty eight disabled elected officials.
But outside of two disabled veterans, there is apparently only one disabled person in that group - and that’s NY Governor David Paterson, who was not elected to the Governor’s office.
Yes, but couldn’t that be due in part to the fact that a disability might encroach on one’s ability to pursue public office?
Obviously so if it convinces people not to vote for you. But I don’t see any reason why being blind or deaf or confined to a wheelchair would prevent anyone from performing the duties of an elected official.
In Britain we have been proudly electing the mentally disabled to parliament for over three centuries.
For that to be meaningful I think we’d need to know how often disabled people run for those offices. I am sure there is some selection bias at work. I’m also sure that if a paraplegic ran for president we’d be treated to many months of annoying questions about whether Americans were “ready” to elect such a person, the same way we heard those questions about black people during the 2008 campaign. Campaigns are very different now then they were in FDR’s time. It’s possible people would simply get used to his disability by seeing him on TV over and over again, and by election time, they just wouldn’t care anymore. His political skills were exceptional and my guess is that he would have dealt with it, and probably would not have concealed his disability if he didn’t feel it were necessary. The question is, would he have been elected president before a sex scandal took him down? 
Yes, but your truly mentally impaired can only reach high office by heredity. I’m looking at you here Charles.
In our country, every four years we seriously consider voting for the stupidest person in the country. In 1976 we had Reagan and Ford, in 1980 we had Reagan, and again in 1984. We discovered by 1992 that GHW Bush was not as stupid as kissing Reagan’s butt for 8 years would entail, so we threw him out for a skirt chasing Bubba who couldn’t keep his pants zipped. Dan Quayle was and is an idiot, but only coming within a heart beat of the number one spot. In 1996 we had an idiot resign a perfectly good job from the Senate because he thought that would endear him to the American people. In 2000 and 2004 we voted for the stupidest American in history. W makes Charles look like a damn Einstein. In 2008, the only way to top this stupidity was to get the most senile man in the Senate to pick the most aggressive, arrogant and ignorant bully neighbor bitch in the country.
That logic seems a little circular. It’s like arguing that the reason there were no black Senators in 1940 was because no black candidates ran for the Senate.
Well you can’t simply say “There is X percentage of this type of people in the US, therefore every job should have the identical X percentage of those people.”
Roughly 50% of the population is female, therefore half of all our elected officials should be female, right?
By Beria, you’ve forgotten that all these people you speak of were college educated (George W Bush at Yale)? Plus compared to Robert Byrd or Ted Kennedy at the time John McCain couldn’t be considered old or senile.
Anyways I suspect FDR would be unelectable due to being too conservative.
You got that backwards, Qin. Atilla the Hun is unelectable for being too liberal. FDR, who literally saved capitalism, is considered a “communist” by modern conservatives.
Why can’t you simply say that? Because it’s uncomfortable?
You win the best (joke) answer to this thread 
Merci. 
Actually, to the OP — Although I should not condone physically disabled people as officials: there are so many obvious difficulties that would impede their efficiency; although not so strongly against such people as were the ancient Greeks and Hebrews both of whose heritage informs our thinking — we recently had a blind Home Secretary, Mr. Blunkett; but a more amazing example of triumph would be Arthur MacMorrough Kavanagh ( disclaimer: I belong to Clan Caomhánach, myself ), who:
', Born with only the rudiments of arms and legs, Arthur nevertheless, by indomitable resolution and perseverance, triumphed over his physical defects, and learned to do almost all that the normal man can do, better than most men. Though in general carried on the back of his servant, he had a mechanical chair so contrived that he was able to move about the room without even this assistance.
His chest was broad, but he could make the stumps of his arms meet across it, and by long practice he made the stumps themselves so supple, strong, and nervous, that with the reins round them he could manage a horse as well as if he had them between his fingers, and even make good use of a whip. In riding he was strapped on a chair saddle, and though thus exposed to the gravest risks in the event of his horse falling or breaking his girths, rode to hounds and took fences and walls as boldly as any in the field.
He was also an expert angler, fishing from a boat or from horseback, and supplying the want of wrist-play by dexterous jerks of the stumps of his arms. Nor did his practical dexterity end here. He contrived to shoot, and shoot well, both in cover and the open, carrying a gun without a trigger-guard, resting the piece upon his left arm-stump, and jerking the trigger with his right. He also became a fair amateur draughtsman and painter, and wrote more legibly than many who suffer from no physical defect.
…
Arthur subsidised and managed the railway line from Borris to Bagnalstown until it was taken over by the Great Southern and Western Railway. He was a justice of the peace for the counties of Wexford, Kilkenny, and Carlow, high sheriff of co. Kilkenny in 1856 and of co. Carlow in 1857, and a member, and from 1862 chairman, of the board of guardians of the New Ross poor-house, in which, though himself a strong protestant, he had a chapel provided for the benefit of Roman catholic inmates, the first of the kind in Ireland.
Daily he might be seen seated under an old oak in the courtyard of Borris House, administering justice, adjusting differences, making up quarrels, and even arranging marriages. Here, also, in the winter he distributed beef and blankets among the poor. Arthur represented co. Wexford in parliament from 1866 to 1868, and Co. Carlow from 1868 to 1880. During the Fenian rising he fortified and provisioned Borris House for a siege, and patrolled the country nightly as in 1848.
Arthur was a conservative, voted against the disestablishment of the Irish church, and took an active part in its reorganisation upon a voluntary basis. On the other hand, he supported the Land Bill of 1870. He spoke seldom, but with great weight; his maiden speech decided the fate of the Poor Law (Ireland) Amendment Bill of 1869. He supported the Peace Preservation Bills of 1870 and 1875.
He lost his seat at the general election of 1880, even his own tenantry voting against him; was appointed lord-lieutenant of co. Carlow, and sat on the Bessborough commission. Dissenting from the report of his colleagues, he drew up one of his own, in which the principal feature was a proposal to extend the Bright clauses of the act of 1870. Foreseeing the storm, he initiated the Irish Land Committee, of which he became one of the honorary secretaries. ’
Which all seems a damn sight rather more than most of us will ever do fully abled — and in the 19th century too, with scarce more modern machinery than they had had since civilisation started.
It probably wouldn’t. My thought was that while many people who are disabled in some way contribute mightily to society and can manage themselves just fine, it does present something of an obstacle. Some disabled people have more than enough to do just supporting themselves and gaining a meaningful life and might not have time and energy left over for the rigors of attempting to be elected. I would hazard a guess that the percentage of disabled people attempting to be elected is lower than that of people who do not face this obstacle.