Googling around for a cite on the above, I found myself in a previous discussion on the exact same topic.
I liked the one where he said there was no one, or very few, left in Germany who had been active members of the Nazi Party. Duh – if we still had WWII vets, so would they!
A Wehrmacht veteran is not the same as a Nazi. (ETA: in the vast majority of cases, I believe. Even if there was some kind of mandated oath and nominal party membership–which I don’t believe there was–that doesn’t make Wehrmacht soldiers into active Nazis any more than Constantine’s Roman legions were active Christians.)
Okay, forget the veteran bit then. Point is, he made it sound as if they’d all died of old age by the '80s. But I had relatives still thriving who had served in WWII, so how much older could Party members have been? And if you include the Hitler Youth, that’s even more who were “alive and participating in any way,” as Ronnie put it. (Heck, our current Pope was a Hitler Youth.)
I think this quote on Iran Contra demonstrates Reagan had lost touch with reality:
“A few months ago, I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that’s true, but the facts and evidence tell me it is not.”
– Ronald Reagan, admitting the Iran-Contra Affair, March 1987.
OK - I’m pretty sure we won’t get an actual cite for when Reagan might have first shown signs of Alzheimers. However, we can put together a very rough time frame. From here, we see that he was diagnosed almost 6 years after leaving office. Now, there is no way of knowing how long before that he may have shown symptoms. However, from here, we can see that the typical length of time between onset of symptoms and diagnosis is around 2 years. So, while certainly not definitive, it appears that he may not have shown signs of Alzheimers until as many as 4 years after he left office.
Except we SAW the signs all during his second term.
Gee, challenging an unsourced allegation on the SDMB. I wonder if that has ever happened before?
Maybe we could come up with a catch phrase for it. Blight? Might? Height?
:shrugs:
Keep repeating it. Eventually, you won’t need evidence.
Regards,
Shodan
Keep denying it. The truth was obvious. I don’t see why you think it’s such an insult anyway. It’s not like it was any kind of moral failure on his part.
I certainly agree we SAW signs of something. I just don’t know what that was. Could have been alzheimers - could have been something else. In fact, Reagan himself was worried about sinility, since it ran in the family:
Now I think it’s impressive that anyone can handle that job at the age Reagan did. But I also think we saw some signs of something - sinility, alzheimers, whatever.
And add me to the list of people wondering why it’s apostasy to even hint that Saint Ronnie may have had a random illness.
According to a strong Democratic activist and amateur fiction writier of my acquaintance, who was intrigued by and greatly respected Reagan the man, while opposed to many of his policies (and used him as a background character in his fiction), this was not the case. His Alzheimer’s was barely detectable during his time in office, and only became sweriously symptomatic well after he left office.
That doesn’t really contradict what Dragwyr said.
Isn’t senility just an old-fashioned euphemism for Alzheimer’s?
At any rate, the OP acknowledges that most mental defects of presidents wouldn’t be made official, so what we’re left with is speculation. I speculate Reagan was in early-stage Alzheimer’s by 1986.
No, senility is another word for dementia, of which Alzheimer’s is one type.
Cue Shodan freaking out.
The fact that he claimed to have forgotten something of that magnitude it is quite frightening.
Shodan – no one said the guy was stupid. We’re saying he might have been sick. THAT is not an insult, and to assume that it is, WOULD be an insult to those who DO suffer from dementia and Alzheimers.
:dubious:
There’s another way to take that quote, you realize. Not to get all Clintonesque, but it depends on the meanings of the words I and my. It’s conceivable that Mr. Reagan meant, “I would not have chosen to trade arms for hostages, but persons who work for me did so using my authority but without my knowledge, and I am taking responsibility for their actions rather than hanging them out to dry.”
If he hadn’t been such a habitual indulger of Truthiness, that interpretation might be reasonable. But there it is, in its purest form.
Has he been published? Because I’d be interested in reading that.
From what I remember, he literally did say that he’d forgotten he’d given the approval. Amazingly enough, I think people generally believed him. I think I believed him. It seemed perfectly plausible.
Note that I’m not saying that is what President Reagan meant–only that there are alternate interpretations. I don’t recall the speech.