Creeping political dementia
It’s sometimes hard to tell when someone is losing the capacity to think clearly
The good news, such as it is during these days of weirdness in the body politic, is that a 21st-century pathologist discovered — while working in Pittsburgh — the association between repeated concussions in 20th-century professional football players and mental impairment later in their lives. His findings figured prominently in the billiondollar disposition in January of the players’ union litigation against the National Football League.
The research of Bennet Omalu, a University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University alumnus then working in the Allegheny County coronor’s office, along with the courage of a legendary football couple, are credited most profoundly with driving the NFL finally to grapple with the effects of concussions. Widely celebrated as the best tight end in the first 50 years of the sport, the late Hall of Famer John Mackey and his wife, Sylvia, were at the forefront of the campaign seeking compensation for aging football players who suffered mental impairment believed to be linked to concussions they experienced during their playing years.
The bad news is that no evidenced-based cause-and-effect nexus has surfaced to account for intellectually impaired politicians, especially at the highest level. Do old politicos need such advocacy? Perhaps.
People of a certain age around the world likely experienced a range of reactions — depending on their political persuasion — to a bumbling Ronald Reagan in the last months of his presidency. We watched as he stumbled his way through public appearances, with Nancy Reagan once seen prompting him like a puppeteer to produce his marionette-like response.
No fan of the 40th president, I was bemused by the spectacle. But, when Reagan’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis was made public about five and a half years later, it was no laughing matter. And it made me wonder, reflecting on the waning months of his time in the White House, exactly when this illness unleashed its attack on his brain.
In the years leading up to the death of John Mackey, close observers initially just thought it odd that the ferocious competitor as a Baltimore Colt and as the first president of the NFL Players’ Association inexplicably and continually repeated himself. The John Mackey I knew — as a friend in my days working at Syracuse University (his alma mater) — once told me, “When I took the field, my mission was to tear off my opponent’s head.” He was in his mid-50s then.
By his mid-60s, his confusing behavior slowly became apparent, almost imperceptibly so. In 2011, I attended John Mackey’s funeral; he died at 69.
In recent months I think of the 40th president and the No. 1 tight end as I try to comprehend the instability that appears to possess our 45th president. Neither a psychiatrist nor an exorcist, I didn’t even stay at a Holiday Inn last night. All the same, I conclude, as my sainted mother used to say of strange humans, “He’s mental.” He no longer pretends to make much sense, if he ever did.
Now, I don’t say that President Donald Trump is dumb. After all, he is a graduate of Penn’s Wharton School of Finance and has managed to relieve others of hundreds of millions of dollars. Moreover, I am aware of the crazy-like-a-fox phenomenon, and this condition may apply to him as he counts on the gullibility of certain Americans to enable his deleterious deeds. Then there is the matter of his maintaining favorability levels of nearly 90 percent among his loyal voting base. Before I could embrace other possibilities, however, I received support from Washington, D.C., for my “he’s mental” speculation.
It turns out that Democratic Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island recently pronounced Mr. Trump “crazy” in a private conversation with Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who responded by lamenting the president’s inexplicable ignorance of the federal budget, “I’m worried.” The pair did not know that their tete a
tete was picked up on an open microphone. I muse in the two senators’ company, though not becoming, as they are, among the 100 voters who would serve as jury if the president is impeached by the House of Representatives.
As early as the presidential inauguration in January, I queried a friend — a wise one with grayer hair than mine — whether he thought the president would be impeached. “No,” he said, predicting a feckless Congress. “The Republicans are in charge.”
From junior high school civics, I recall that a president’s Cabinet could, under the Constitution, declare him too ill — or too “mental” — to serve, an action that would be designed to culminate in the president’s ouster. More good news.
At the same time, more bad news: During the embarrassing first full-Cabinet meeting of Mr. Trump’s presidency on June 12, members paid fealty to the commander in chief and all but kissed ... the ring.
After defeating their final monarch, the founding fathers signed the Constitution of the United States of America 230 years ago next month. A year later, in 1788, having lost 13 of his most prized colonies, King George III of Great Britain was pronounced deranged, unable to attend to affairs of state. He was frequently observed chattering away repetitiously and unintelligibly.
Of course, no one knows to this day when the stealthy launch of disturbance began within the king’s royal brain. Americans find sad and dispiriting the news of our sports stars slipping into dementia, but we move on with our lives. However, in presidency and in monarchy, early-onset “mental” cases can change the world’s destiny.