On July 1, 1893, a certain Commodore Elias Benedict prepared his yacht, the Oneida, for an unusual mission out on Chesapeake Bay. The yacht’s saloon was repurposed as a surgical suite. A team of six was recruited to perform the surgery, including a dentist named Ferdinand Hasbrouk, who would serve as the anesthesiologist. The patient, a rather obese man, 56 years of age, was suffering from a carcinoma of the mouth. The patient was named Stephen Grover Cleveland, and he was the 24th president of the United States, having already been the 22nd president of the United States, guaranteeing him a place in every trivia contest until the end of time. The operation was performed under maximum security. From the Health Sciences Library of the University of Arizona.
However, there were political considerations. A nationwide depression had just gotten underway and in the name of strengthening the economy, the president was leading a movement to repeal the Sherman Silver Purchase Act and uphold the gold standard. In August, the president had to address Congress and thus, he had to be able to recover from the surgery’s effects by that time. It was already late June. Furthermore, the president was concerned that reports of his condition could prove even more unsettling, so the surgery would have to be done in secret.
The economy was sinking into the bust cycle of the boom-and-bust financial system of the age. (Today, we know it as Project 2025, section 4.) The Panic of 1893 had struck in February, and it would last for the next four years. In addition, it was gradually coming to light that Chester Arthur, Cleveland’s predecessor the first time around, had been debilitated by Bright’s disease throughout his term of office. Arthur, in fact, was already dead. Cleveland’s political concerns were well-taken, but he never was the same after the surgery.
Twenty-six years later, in the middle of a barnstorming railroad trip aimed at raising support for the new world he wanted to build, President Woodrow Wilson collapsed in Pueblo, Colorado, and then collapsed entirely six weeks later with a stroke that permanently disabled him. The rudimentary political spin system of the time went into action almost immediately. Wilson was said to have suffered an attack of medical gobbledegook–“a nervous reaction in his digestive organs.” Upon returning to Washington, Wilson went into seclusion, and his wife, Edith, pretty much ran the country. From PBS:
Everything changed on the morning of Oct. 2, 1919. According to some accounts, the president awoke to find his left hand numb to sensation before falling into unconsciousness. In other versions, Wilson had his stroke on the way to the bathroom and fell to the floor with Edith dragging him back into bed. However those events transpired, immediately after the president’s collapse, Mrs. Wilson discretely [sic] phoned down to the White House chief usher, Ike Hoover and told him to “please get Dr. Grayson, the president is very sick.” Grayson quickly arrived. Ten minutes later, he emerged from the presidential bedroom and the doctor’s diagnosis was terrible: “My God, the president is paralyzed,” Grayson declared.
Protective of both her husband’s reputation and power, Edith shielded Woodrow from interlopers and embarked on a bedside government that essentially excluded Wilson’s staff, the Cabinet and the Congress. During a perfunctory meeting the president held with Sen. Gilbert Hitchcock (D-Neb.) and Albert Fall (R-N.M.) on Dec. 5, he and Edith even tried to hide the extent of his paralysis by keeping his left side covered with a blanket. Sen. Fall, who was one of the president’s most formidable political foes told Wilson, “I hope you will consider me sincere. I have been praying for you, Sir.” Edith later recalled that Woodrow was, at least, well enough to jest, “Which way, Senator?” A great story, perhaps, but Wilson’s biographer, John Milton Cooper, Jr. doubts its veracity and notes that neither Edith nor Dr. Grayson recorded such a clever rejoinder in their written memoranda from that day.
Edith Wilson insisted to her dying day that her role in the last two years of the Wilson administration was nominal. This is almost assuredly a barefaced nonfact, as the work of subsequent historians has shown.
Everyone knows about how FDR’s people, aided by an acquiescent press, kept a lid on the president’s inability to walk. What they were less able to conceal was how truly sick the president was during his last years in office. From the University of Arizona:
On March 28, 1944, Roosevelt received a complete physical including a cardiac examination. Dr. Howard G. Bruenn handled this. Bruenn’s diagnosis was that the President was suffering from “hypertension, hypertensive heart disease, cardiac failure (left ventricle), and acute bronchitis. (Bruenn, p. 580). Bruenn recommended a week or two of rest, the use of digitalis, a lighter, salt-free diet, and codeine for the cough and a moderate loss of weight. However, given the president’s schedule, this was not carried out right away. McIntire thought the use of digitalis was going too far. In Ferrell’s account, Bruenn found himself against the Surgeon General and a team of leading doctors at Bethesda, including Officer in Command John Harper, Executive Officer Robert Duncan, radiology head Charles Behrens, and Paul Dickens, a professor of medicine at George Washington University. Also involved were two honorary medical consultants, James Paullin and Frank Lacey. These latter two conducted another examination of the president on March 31st. Bruenn held firm on the need for digitalization and after three meetings and a threat to remove himself from the case, he was authorized to begin. Within ten days, Roosevelt showed remarkable improvement. Bruenn found himself making frequent visits to the White House.
Since then, we’ve had Eisenhower, whose doctors were relatively upfront about his major heart attack, in 1955, but buried the news of his stroke two years later. John Kennedy’s myriad concealed medical conditions would fill a book, and indeed have filled several. What’s less well-known is the fact that Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, felt so ill that he had to be talked into running for his own full term in 1964. From The Political Effects of Presidential Illness: The Case of Lyndon B. Johnson:
More serious, Johnson was rushed to the hospital at 2:26 a.m. suffering from chest pains and a cough. Vice President Humphrey was telephoned at 3:30 a.m. in Minnesota with the news that the president had been hospitalized with chest pains. Humphrey was not alone in his fears that Johnson had suffered another heart attack, a prospect he found "particularly frightening because Lyndon had suffered a serious one ten years before." Many years later, Humphrey complained that Johnson “for some bizarre reason, refused to let any medical facts be given to me immediately. Instead. The orders came to me that he wanted me to fulfill my scheduled weekly commitments so that no one would think his illness was serious." When Humphrey left home later that morning, he still did not know whether Johnson had suffered another heart attack, how critical his condition might be, or whether he would soon be succeeding Johnson as president. He later wrote that "it was an awesome prospect, a terrible shock, compounded by not knowing what precisely was happening" (Humphrey, 1976, p. 314). Perhaps the shock was further compounded by the fact that although Johnson had intended to enter in arrangement with his vice-president, he had not, at that time, done so.
More recently, it was an open secret in Washington that President Ronald Reagan was probably a symptomatic Alzheimer’s patient throughout his second term. Interestingly, given our current state of affairs, the first real public manifestation of it came in his first debate against Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale in 1984. From the AP (via the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette):
For Reagan, the age issue faded in his first term as any health questions focused on his recovery from a nearly fatal assassination attempt in 1981. He seemed headed for an easy reelection. And debates seemed natural settings for the smooth-talking former Hollywood actor. But his performance in the first showdown with Mondale in the 1984 campaign brought the age issue roaring back. The president, then 73, rambled and hesitated. He seemed to lose his train of thought at one point, and appeared tired at others. No one had seen him perform publicly in such a way, recalled Jaroslovsky, who co-authored a story headlined: “New Question in Race: Is Oldest U.S. President Now Showing His Age?” …
… Then, as now, Mr. Jaroslovsky said, the embattled president’s supporters provided vigorous spin. Reagan’s operation said he had been tired. There was sniping about the staff overpreparing him, Mr. Jaroslovsky said. Mr. Biden’s team cited fatigue from two overseas trips that had exhausted even younger staffers. It was a bad night, they said. Blame flew at the president’s aides. Democrats on Capitol Hill griped that Mr. Biden's performance had damaged their chances at the polls. And press critics asserted that reporters had failed to hold the president and his staff to account.
Reagan managed to deliver a spoon-fed wisecrack at the beginning of the second debate, and everybody loved good ol’ Dutch again. But in Washington there were real concerns. In their book Landslide, an account of his second term, authors Jane Mayer and Doyle McManus revealed that an aide to then incoming White House chief of staff Howard Baker named James Cannon had been dispatched to discreetly investigate whether or not the provisions of the 25th Amendment regarding forcible presidential abdication might be in order and, more spectacularly, Cannon believed that it should be considered.
I bring all of this up to prove a point—namely that the next White House that is completely honest about the president’s health will be the first. (Do people really believe the big ship of fools that was Donald Trump’s medical team?) The concocted melodrama around the president’s dismal showing in the campaign’s first debate—Hi, Dutch!—has served nothing but to obscure the clarity necessary to make what is a terribly difficult call. If I seem to wax overly historical, it’s because I find it more edifying than the hysterical.
This article ran in the Last Call With Charles P. Pierce newsletter on July 7, 2024.
