Poor health doesn't indicate poor president
Poor health doesn't indicate poor president
Christian Gatsby - Philadelphia
USA TODAY states that presidential candidates should disclose all their personal data, such as medical records ("Candidates withhold data; it's time to get it all out," Our view, Full disclosure debate, March 11).
USA TODAY's editorial states: "Some of this data, such as tax and medical records, customarily emerge once the major party nominees are selected. But with important choices having already been made in the Republican Party, and an important one still to come in the Democratic race, it's time for full disclosure."
Does USA TODAY's editorial board believe that if someone has a health problem, then it makes that person unfit to hold office?
Unbeknownst to many Americans, several presidents have been ill. This did not stop them from governing efficiently:
* Some of America's earliest leaders — George Washington, Andrew Jackson and Zachary Taylor — contacted numerous diseases, including dysentery, malaria and what could have been cholera or typhoid fever.
* Abraham Lincoln suffered bouts of depression, but he succeeded in keeping the Union together and in addressing the issue of slavery through the Civil War.
* Franklin D. Roosevelt contracted polio in 1921 and was confined to metal braces and a wheelchair.
Did his physical handicap make him unfit to be president? FDR is considered by many historians as an exceptional president.
American voters should be more concerned about a candidate's solutions, character and morality than his or her health.
(appeared in USA TODAY)
