It's Good to Come Clean on Health

By Hugh Sidey

Never have Americans had such a detailed tour of the insides of a President as they got last week. They went right down Gerald Ford's alimentary canal, took side excursions through his heart ("no cardiomegaly or precordial lift") and around his liver ("12 cm. in the mid-clavicular line"), paused to contemplate his football knees ("nonpainful patellofemoral crepitation with pressure motion") and prodded other parts that are much more delicate.

The tour guide was Rear Admiral William Lukash, the President's genial doctor. His seven-page report covering Ford's annual physical was given out in all its glorious detail. Dr. Lukash had opposed release; Ford ordered it done. As a matter of fact, after one gets through Ford's postnasal drip and a severe cramp in his left calf, the report turns out to be one of the best documents recently issued from the White House. Ford is in bully health.

A lot of ribald jokes have swirled around town as the politicians pursued the facts from Ford's ocular fundi to his inguinal rings. Nothing is in the report, of course, about his intelligence or courage or compassion, qualities that finally mean more than anything else in leadership. Yet, after all the yukking is over, there is something reassuring in the knowledge that President and candidate is in such good physical shape. The link between how a President feels and how he decides is too direct to be taken lightly.

It was Dwight Eisenhower who first exposed his vital organs to public scrutiny. James Hagerty, Ike's press secretary, believes that if all those bits about pulse and blood pressure had not been put out when Ike had his heart attack in 1955, he might have lost the 1956 election. The nation was broadly educated for the first time about heart disease and concluded that 1) Ike had been honest with the people and 2) was able to continue in office once he recovered. However, when Ike was out with that heart attack, then ileitis, his Administration pretty much marked time. Some still insist that he never regained his interest in governing after his hospital stay for ileitis in 1956, and many of today's problems began to incubate during that time of indifference.

Major illnesses have profoundly affected the presidency. The classic case in modern times concerns Franklin Roosevelt; he was too sick to run for a fourth term, and history would be different if he had not done so. But lesser afflictions have their effects too, though they are harder to detect.

An ailing John Kennedy went to Vienna in 1961 to meet with Nikita Khrushchev. There is no direct evidence that the throb in J.F.K.'s back affected his ability to debate Khrushchev, but a few of his aides, who helped him in and out of hot baths, wondered about it. Kennedy knew the dangers of a weakened body. During the Cuban missile crisis, he insisted on his hour's nap and hot packs each afternoon, remarking that the worst thing he could do was to get too tired and lose his judgment.

How much did Lyndon Johnson's low physical state, which lasted for months following his gall-bladder operation in 1965, contribute to his leadership malaise? Considerably, says his former aide Bill Moyers. L.B.J. had times of depression, became mentally flat, got testy with his staff and angry at the press. His decisions about the Viet Nam War and how much to tell the people became distorted.

Richard Nixon constantly worried about his energy level and spent days resting himself for his big events. While Henry Kissinger insists that Nixon's lack of stamina never interfered with his decision making, others are not so sure. In Nixon's last year in office, the pressures of Watergate robbed him of his precious sleep, and we learn more and more about his fantasying to startled Congressmen over his ability to start a nuclear war within minutes.

Disability does not necessarily foreshadow trouble in the presidency, any more than robustness assures success. But being of sound body at the start helps narrow the odds. Every candidate owes it to himself and the people to follow Ford's lead.

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