Thread: Son: Reagan had Alzheimer's as leader

Son: Reagan had Alzheimer's as leader

Memoir: President may have suspected in 1986

Jan. 16, 2011 12:00 AM
Associated Press

NEW YORK - Ronald Reagan's son suggests in a new book that his father suffered from the beginning stages of Alzheimer's disease while he was still in the White House.

The memoir quotes excerpts from Ron Reagan's book "My Father at 100," published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Group.

Reagan's son writes that he believes his father would have left office before his second term ended in 1989 had the disease been diagnosed then. U.S. News & World Report was the first to break the publishing embargo.

"I've seen no evidence that my father (or anyone else) was aware of his medical condition while he was in office," Reagan writes. "Had the diagnosis been made in, say 1987, would he have stepped down? I believe he would have."

Ronald Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 1994, five years after leaving office. The popular Republican president died in 2004 at age 93 from complications of the disease.

The younger Reagan recalls how his father became uncharacteristically lost for words and looked "lost and bewildered" during the 1984 presidential debates with Democratic rival Walter Mondale. He says his father may have suspected the onset of Alzheimer's in 1986 when he was flying over familiar canyons north of Los Angeles and became alarmed that he could no longer remember their names.

But Reagan says the issue of his father's health should not tarnish his legacy as the nation's 40th president.

"Does this delegitimize his presidency? Only to the extent that President Kennedy's Addison's disease or Lincoln's clinical depression undermine theirs," Reagan writes.

"Better, it seems to me, to judge our presidents by what they actually accomplish than what hidden factors may be weighing on them."

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/ ... z1BDxwOB7P

That could explain why he gave amnesty to millions of illegal aliens.

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

That could explain why he gave amnesty to millions of illegal aliens.

BINGO! That explains that.

Jan 20, 2011

Lesley Stahl's 1986 observations stir Reagan Alzheimer's controversy

09:31 AM
By Tim Dillon, USA TODAY

Ron Reagan's suggestion in his new book My Father at 100 that President Reagan may have suffered Alzheimer's while in the White House has provoked a heated backlash, including a retort by Michael Reagan that his brother Ron is "an embarrassment" to the family. Michael Reagan flatly rejects his brother's claims about Reagan's mental state.

With the controversy swirling, David Corn, Washington bureau chief of Mother Jones magazine, writes today about an incident involving then-CBS White House correspondent Lesley Stahl who came close to reporting in 1986 that something was wrong after observing the president up close. In the end, she decided not to.

Writes Corn:

Whether or not Stahl made the right call — she seems to believe she should have reported something at the time — the evidence she later gathered indicates that Reagan aides were concerned about his mental condition during his presidency. Perhaps it wasn't Alzheimer's but another health issue. Yet her account and her subsequent reporting suggests Ron Reagan is closer to the truth than Michael Reagan. The Gipper was slipping while he was occupying the most powerful position in the world, and the public was kept in the dark.

Read the full story here
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/01 ... sley-stahl
about Stahl's encounter with the president in the Oval Office.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities ... roversy-/1