I was in College and Grad school during the Reagan presidential years, and recall his cognitive decline starting before he left public “service”.
I spent a while on YouTube looking for examples of him speaking and displaying signs of confusion or dementia, but found none. Can anyone point me in the right direction?
There might be a factual answer to this question, so I’ll shoot this over to GQ.
Dr Larry Altman who’s a Senior Medical columnist for the New York Times, once investigated whether he was senile in office. Transcript of him talking about it.
—QUOTE------------
I was unable to find any evidence by any medical criteria that is known to the medical profession that Mr Regan had any symptoms or signs of Alzheimer’s when he was President. The signs and symptoms developed several years after he left office, but interviews with senior Cabinet officials in his last term, with his doctors who treated him on a regular basis, and other people who knew him, could turn up no evidence that there was any incidence or incidents that suggested that he had Alzheimer’s. And even his biographer didn’t find any evidence of it.
I don’t know if it would be findable on youtube but I clearly remember some bad moments in the '84 debates against Mondale. Long pauses, stammering, moments of confusion, trailing off…
It was somewhat alarming to me at the time, even though I ultimately still voted for him.
His public appearances were usually scripted and controlled pretty well in his second term, but I think the signs were there pretty early.
Remember, this is a guy who whose defense against Iran-Conra was that he literally had forgotten that he had traded arms for hostages at the time he denied it and at one point said in a deposition the Walsh investigation that “It was like I wasn’t President at all.”
The hell of it is, everyone, Walsh included, believed him. Hell, I believed him.
I remember Nancy stage-whispering a stock answer for Ronnie to use in response to a reporter’s question once. “Doing all we can.”
A bad moment does not make dementia - if it did, I’d readily diagnose most of this board, myself included.
It is easy to go back after someone has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and point to forgetful moments as evidence that it appeared earlier than suspected, while forgetting that had no Alzheimer’s appeared, that person might still have forgotten his car keys.
No, there’s a difference. My father had Alzheimer’s, and it’s much more than simply forgetting things, even in its early states. The word “befuddled” comes to mind. And yes, we all lose our car keys at times, but the Alzheimer patient can’t remember what they’re for.
I definitely remember Reagan having that telltale befuddled affect in his second term.
You also have to remember that Reagan was in his late 70s and a lot of what people might call the beginning of his disease is just oldmanitis. People talked about how he declined in his later term, but that’s what happens when you go from age 69 to age 77. I was always amazed at how sharp Reagan was for a man of his age.
Not to steer this into another forum, just an observation, though, our current President is only in his early 60s and his speech and memory are atrocious, and have declined rapidly in recent years.
I’ve noticed that, too. But he may have other issues that didn’t plague Mr. Reagan, my impression of whom was that he was a pretty straight guy, vice-wise.
A few years before the Alzheimers announcement, I saw him on C-SPAN at a (I think Heritage Foundation) dinner honoring Margaret Thatcher. He was the main speaker for the evening- he got up, stammered, made a couple of false starts, then suddenly, the lights came on in his eyes, you could literally see everything fall into place and he gave the best damn speech I ever heard out of him.
I have been hoping to find a video of that speech ever since.
I disliked Reagan tremendously while he was in office, but I would be very hesitant to suggest there was any clear evidence of dementia. Instead, my impression was that he seemed to be pretty satisfied to practice a “hands off” management style in which he did not see the need to be troubled by specifics of a great many decisions being made and actions being taken under his authority. And in speaking, he generally tended toward scripted “feel good” generalities, often stumbling when confronted by specifics.
I did not and do not like or respect the man, but I see no basis for accusing him of dementia while in office. I was a PolSci college student/grad student during most of his time in office, paying very close attnetion to national politics/policy.
Anecdotal, I’ll admit, and the writer had a definite agenda, but I have a book called “The Clothes Have No Emperor” in which the author compiled a near-daily record of political, social, cultural, etc. incidents from the day of Reagan’s election to the day of GB1’s inauguration. Mixed in with the cultural flotsam (Michael Jackson’s hair catching on fire, Donna Rice modeling No Excuses jeans, etc.) the book serves as a pretty decent record of Reagan’s many gaffes and blunders and the excuses that his staff made to try to cover for them. One thing that leaps out is the observations from a number of sources independent of the compiler that while Reagan had a camera pointed at him he seemed to “come alive” and was usually able to perform, but as soon as the cameras were switched off he went dead behind the eyes, like he only existed while on camera. It’s a fun snapshot book of the 1980s, with some truly chilling bits mixed in.
Here’s an article that mentions that incident and chronicles his descent.
I remember many of us who used to watch Reagan, specifically when he was President, thought that he had Alzheimer’s or some other kind of dementia, and talked about it, and I remember newspeople sometimes raising the subject too. I always figured that they waited until he was out of office to announce that he did indeed have Alzheimers in part to avoid having the public believe their President had been left in office while partly incapacitated.
The people who helped support Reagan would always sort of look up and maybe move closer to him whenever he decided to depart from his prepared text. The press often referred to these people as his “handlers”. I didn’t remember them referred to that way before the Reagan era - they were called “assistants” or “aids”. “Handlers” sounded like people who help control animals, or perhaps hospital patients.
That’s just so sad.
…John McCain showing signs of early-stage alzheimers? The man has displayed quite a few frightening lapses-and the fact is, he is 71. I have a problem with somebody that old.
Amazing. This was the third post in the thread, and still we get a string of completely unqualified opinions in direct contradiction of the findings of a medical doctor who specifically went looking for symptoms.
This is GQ. The facts are supposed to make a difference.
Regards,
Shodan
>…still we get a string of completely unqualified opinions in direct contradiction of the findings of a medical doctor…
>This is GQ. The facts are supposed to make a difference.
Sure, but quoting a doctor doesn’t settle it, does it? For one thing, it appears there was some attempt to cover up what was going on, so the base evidence on which to base a diagnosis is itself questionable. For another thing, the doctor quoted here didn’t even examine Reagan, did he?
This thread did not start in GQ, and despite SkipMagic’s optimism, we have no solid facts here. I doubt that we ever will. President Reagan’s presidency was a smooth, polished thing. If he was impaired in office, it was kept from us.
i believe there were problems after the shooting. a person the age he was at the time, and the amount of damage that was done to his system, can cause a dementia effect. i’ve seen it in members of my own family. they do not recover to the point they were before mentally or physically.
post-shooting is where i would start the “descent” into twilight. before that i would go with either “not interested, therefore not important to me” ("w"itis) or “oldmanitis”.
“And yes, we all lose our car keys at times, but the Alzheimer patient can’t remember what they’re for.”
this is the theory i’ve always heard. if you can remember what your keys are for when you find them, then you are fairly okay.