It is very striking to look at before-and-after pictures, though. You know Lincoln didn’t start out looking that tired?Here he is in 1860, and here in 1865, shortly before his death. Now, the beard does make him look older, but it looks like a lot more than 5 years has passed between those two pictures if you ask me. (I like that one, though, because it shows that he really was a man who smiled and laughed a lot. You can see it in his face.)
This page shows Bill Clinton before and after. Granted, that is a time of your life when you do start to age more rapidly (check out the Up Documentaries, and they’re only up to 49) but I think it’s safe to say that it’s a pretty stressful job and does take its toll.
Dick Snelling, governor of Vermont, died very unexpectedly of a heart attack in 1991. I’m sure there have been others.
Let me make it clear, as I have elsewhere on the boards, that I do think McCain is physically up to the Presidency. I wasn’t aware of his ex-military “disability” payments before now, though, and wonder about that inconsistency. The office certainly does take its toll. Jimmy Carter, for one, aged quite a bit in just four years.
Keep in mind that military disability is related only to the military and fitness to serve. If I screwed up my knee tomorrow I might get mustered out with a disability pension, but that doesn’t preclude the possibility that I might be able to one day function again in a normal fashion. I would simply be unsuited for continued military service, because the possibility exists that my injury might manifest itself at the worst time, causing others to be hurt or killed.
There are lots of people that collect a disability pension that lead perfectly normal lives.
Hearing damage is not unknown for those who served in the aviation communities. You can collect disability for being partially deaf, and still hold a lot of civilian jobs.
How does his disability prevent him from being President?
This is just silly considering the many Presidents we have had with various disabilities.
I plan to vote for Obama, but calling McCain’s ability to be President into questions when the job is one that FDR proved you could do as long as you had a sound mind is actually insulting to the handicapped and disabled military veterans everywhere.
The military’s standards of “disability” are not entirely based on the veteran’s capability or lack thereof to perform any particular job. There are certain conditions which automatically qualify a veteran for certain levels of disability, regardless of how well treatment is going or how capable the veteran is of performing various tasks. I am not at all surprised to learn that one of the many things McCain endured was enough to label him “disabled”.
As an example (which is not, to my knowledge, specifically applicable to McCain), my dad has a cancer for which the military takes responsibility (he was exposed to Agent Orange, and Uncle Sam takes responsibility for all prostate cancers in vets who were exposed to Agent Orange). A veteran under active treatment for any service-related cancer is automatically put on the “full disability” list, and anyone on full disability for a certain period of time is automatically kept on full disability for life. Nonetheless, he can still get out and about, and is better at hiking mountain trails than most flatlanders I know. His doctors know that he’s still getting out and about: He’s not trying to fool anyone. But because of his cancer, the rules still say he gets disability payments.
I assume that, likewise, McCain’s official disability status doesn’t actually have any bearing on how capable he is of running the country.
They were evaluating me for a hearing shift when I got out myself - listening to HF static for a few years can apparently screw up your hearing as well.
In the end I was sent away with a shift below the disability threshold. Even had it been over the line it would only have earned me 10% of a disability pension. Needless to say, my civilian employment has not been affected.
So I had a small insight into this process at the time. If my hearing ever gets worse I may have to revisit it with the VA. But even the guys getting out with full ride disability pensions weren’t being told to sit on their asses - they were offered vocational training, reasonable accommodation and even preference in federal hiring to get them to work again.
Radio Operator of some kind? (Or something else?) Hadn’t thought of that… glad you weren’t messed up too much.
I suffered some slight hearing loss, due to the proximity of working near (but not on) a carrier flight deck. Also recorded as below minimums for disability.
Pretty much. Operations Specialist. I think most of the damage was done at Sigonella working with the P3 community - we often could only pick the aircraft up on HF voice only and we would crank up the volume and try to make out voices through the static.
Not ideal, but when the plane is over Bosnia, you make allowances.
Again, I don’t think it prevents him from serving as President. If and when I vote against McCain, as I expect to, it certainly won’t be because of this.
The difference between McCain and FDR (well, just the one relevant here) is that FDR didn’t get paid for his disability by the taxpayers, and then say he was fully capable of doing the top job of the Federal government. It goes without saying, I should hope, that I mean no insult to any handicapped or disabled military vet.
Perhaps we need to change the term for payments to veterans for injuries suffered in the line of duty - because when I hear “disabled,” I think, “not fully or normally capable,” or “impaired.” I now see that that is a misconception, at least as it relates to payments to former military personnel.
It is implicit in the McCain campaign’s response to this issue that his physical disabilities - which they concede, i.e. he cannot lift his arms over his head, and he cannot work out with the Fitness-Nut-in-Chief, etc. - do not prevent him from serving as President, if elected. I accept and agree with that. I do not suggest, nor have I ever, that McCain has any mental disability.
Understandable. Keep in mind that this term in the military is understood in relation to fitness for duty. And the military sees no need in general to change its definitions to sync up with civilian ones.
Still, I wonder if it might become an (admittedly unfair) issue if Democrats compare McCain’s disability benefits with scandals like Walter Reed and alleged denials or delays of disability benefits among other Iraq veterans.
To echo Mr. Moto, the term is relative to a person who is 100% ready for duty. The gold standard (0% disabled) covers the broad spectrum from between an 18-year-old just out of basic who can bench press twice his weight, and a 50-year-old colonel who still runs 20 miles a week not counting his long run on the weekends. Similarly, anything that impacts your ability to serve – mild vertigo once a year, partial deafness in one ear, loss of some (or all) mobility in a major joint, stress- or smoke-induced asthma – can start piling up “hits” on your disability score. I’m not sure how bad it has to be before they kick you out, and I imagine some desk jobs get waivers on very slight problems, but the intent is to cover injuries or conditions that make you unable to perform the full range of your duties.
