By Kevin D. Williamson
Thursday, September 08, 2016
Of course Hillary Rodham Clinton’s health is a legitimate
issue for the 2016 election.
So is Donald Trump’s. So is Gary Johnson’s. So is that of
any presidential candidate.
Mrs. Clinton’s media allies (which is to say, the media,
more or less) are circling the wagons on this issue, and it is curious.
The Washington Post’s
Chris Cillizza made an unpersuasive attempt to explain why it was legitimate to
treat John McCain’s health as a campaign issue in 2008 but illegitimate to do
the same with Herself in 2016. McCain, he points out, would have been 72 years
old at the time of his election, the oldest person ever elected to the office;
Herself will, if elected in November, be a sprightly . . . 69 years of age.
McCain bore the scars of Vietnam and Arizona: He was grievously wounded — and
tortured — by the Vietnamese, and he suffers from a recurring melanoma, which
necessitates occasional trips to the doctor to have a patch of dodgy skin
removed. Skin cancer is no joke, but millions of Americans live with melanoma
of the sort McCain has with very little effect on their lives other than
inconvenience.
Mrs. Clinton, in spite of her probably fictitious attempt
to join the military, was never a prisoner of war, nor does she, so far as any
record made public shows, suffer from cancer or any other chronic condition.
Still, she is not exactly the picture of health. As
Cillizza notes, she suffered a concussion as a result of an unfortunate
tendency to fall down, purportedly stemming from an upset stomach. There is at
least one thing that leaps to mind that causes both digestive revolt and
falling on one’s ass, and it is whispered that Mrs. Clinton drinks
immoderately, though there is no evidence that this is in fact the case. She
sometimes requires a helper step to get into the SUVs that whisk her hither and
yon in her pursuit of the presidency.
Mrs. Clinton is also remarkably forgetful: During a
midsummer interview with FBI agents investigating her furtive and illegal
e-mail practices, Mrs. Clinton used the words “I cannot recall” or similar
formulations more than 40 times. Doctor Johnson once remarked that the prospect
of being hanged “concentrates the mind wonderfully,” and perhaps it is the case
that the prospect of being brought up on federal charges related to the handling
of classified material has the opposite effect, producing a kind of
special-purpose dementia.
Mrs. Clinton of course inspires the conspiracy kooks, an
effect that is very much amplified by the fact that her opponent in 2016 is a
big-league conspiracy kook leading a team of minor-league conspiracy kooks.
Louis Brandeis was absolutely correct about sunlight’s being the best
disinfectant, but Mrs. Clinton is a creature of the shade. Given her history of
rampant, craven, deep, broad, sustained, overarching, continuous, relentless
dishonesty about practically every aspect of her personal and public lives, is
it really so implausible that she’d lie about her health? No. She’d lie about
her health even if there were nothing to lie about, just to keep in practice.
Of course reporters and her political opponents should
dig into questions related to Mrs. Clinton’s health. We can be sure that her
research staff was not in the least bit assuaged by that hugely entertaining
letter from Donald Trump’s personal physician, which stopped just short of
declaring kryptonite the candidate’s only weakness.
Gary Johnson, like the man Hillary Clinton was not named
for, has climbed Mount Everest (there’s getting high, and then there’s getting
high) and is in remarkable condition for a 63-year-old man.
On the other hand, Winston Churchill drank Pol Roger like
it was his job, lit up a hell of a lot more blunts on the average day than Gary
Johnson does, and maintained a diet that would have horrified Michelle Obama,
but he was one of the greatest leaders in modern history — and lived to be 90
years old.
If the president of the United States of America were
limited to his proper role — chief executive of the federal bureaucracies and
commander in chief in times of war — then we might not worry too much about his
health. Indeed, if ever we are able to reinvigorate this republic and return
its public and private spheres to their proper roles and proportions, that will
be one of the ways we know we’ve succeeded: “Don’t worry if President Smith
dies in office; we’ll just get another one.”
But we do not have that kind of presidency. Instead, we
have made the president into a kind of Akhenaten, part monarch, part object of
veneration in the national cult. Barack Obama has repeatedly declared himself
to be the instrument — and the vessel — of capital-H History. Mrs. Clinton
speaks in approximately the same way about herself. Donald Trump? “I alone.” If
the presidential inauguration is to be a transubstantiation, then we ought to
inquire as to what sort of body we are being nationally incorporated into.
Personally, I find the prospect revolting, but that is where we are.
Is Mrs. Clinton as sickly as some say? Or is she just a
dotty old bat of the ordinary sort? We can be absolutely sure that we will not
get the truth of it from Mrs. Clinton, and we can be reasonably sure that we
will not get the truth of it from reporters and editors who have renounced all
curiosity on the question.
Mrs. Clinton’s health is a legitimate issue, even if it
offends the tender sensibilities of the Washington
Post.
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