Site icon Elections Daily

Presidential Age and Cover-Ups

  • Sarah Stook

    • 8/3/1981 President making a statement to the press regarding the air traffic controllers strike PATCO in rose garden

    I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.

    This response by Ronald Reagan when journalist Henry Trewhitt asked about his age got everyone- including Democratic rival Walter Mondale- laughing. Reagan would be seventy-three on Inauguration Day, and was already the oldest man ever to hold office. Having won in 1980, he cruised to victory in a landslide in 1984, taking 49 of the 50 states. Age did not seem to bother the voters. It was not until years later that the public discovered that Reagan was afflicted by Alzheimer’s. How or if it impacted his presidency is up for debate, but he clearly won the initial argument.

    Flash forward forty years and we have Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee. Biden will be eighty-two at Inauguration Day 2025, and if he wins and finishes his term, he will be eighty-six. Biden’s  has been a concern for many. Many were aghast when he mixed up sworn enemies Russian premier Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Later that same day, an extremely poor debate performance in which he mixed up Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris raised more concerns. His age, along with worries that he may have dementia, Parkinson’s or another illness, have thrown the Democrats into disarray. 

    Worries about the age and health of the president are not new and have happened since George Washington took the helm in 1789. Biden is far from the only president to have raised questions.

    Age

    The average age of presidents upon taking office is 55, with a number on both the younger and older end of the spectrum. The Constitution specified a minimum age of 35:

    No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

    Twelve US Presidents were sixty or older upon inauguration:

    1. Joe Biden (78)
    2. Donald Trump (70)
    3. Ronald Reagan (69)
    4. William H. Harrison (68)
    5. James Buchanan (65)
    6. George H. W. Bush (64)
    7. Zachary Taylor (64)
    8. Dwight D. Eisenhower (62
    9. Andrew Jackson (61)
    10. John Adams (61)
    11. Gerald Ford (61)
    12. Harry S. Truman (60)

    Several more reached sixty before the end of their presidency:

    1. Andrew Johnson (60)
    2. Lyndon B. Johnson (60)
    3. Richard Nixon (61)
    4. John Quincy Adams (61)
    5. George W. Bush (62)
    6. Franklin D. Roosevelt (63)
    7. Woodrow Wilson (64)
    8. George Washington (65)
    9. Thomas Jefferson (65)
    10. James Madison (65)
    11. James Monroe (66)

    The first president for whom age seemed to be an issue was William Henry Harrison, who was sixty-eight on his inauguration, the oldest of the time. At a time where life expectancy was a lot lower, this was particularly old. Harrison and his supporters, however, knew how to play the game. Harrison’s military service was trotted out as proof of his strength and durability, hence the nickname coming from his famous ‘Tippencanoe’ battle. Supporters waxed lyrical about how he enjoyed ‘manly’ hard cider and came from a log cabin. Considering his family descended from a man who had signed the Declaration of Independence, that last one was a lie. It nevertheless worked. 

    Unfortunately, as we’ll talk more about later, Harrison died in office. 

    When Reagan became the oldest president at sixty-nine nearly 140 years later (he would turn seventy less than a month later), age was brought up once again. This was less of a problem in 1980, but reemerged in 1984. The famous debate comment earlier helped shut the questions down, but other factors helped. When Reagan was shot in March 1981, it is said that his stellar health helped him survive a wound that would have killed many 70 year olds. He walked in and out of the hospital, and was quickly back to work. Surely this worked in his favor.

    Flash forward to 2017. Donald Trump would be the new oldest President, having turned seventy several months prior. Trump was also helped by an energetic attitude which made him seem younger. Some questioned his mental facilities. In 2020, he was nearly four years younger than Joe Biden, who was also older than George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Voters then showed concern about the seventy-eight year old Biden. His campaign attempted to assuage fears, and it was likely a factor in choosing the twenty-one years younger Kamala Harris as his running mate. 

    Four years later, age became the product of concern once again. Biden will be eighty-two years old on the 20th January 2025. Even if he was comparatively mentally and physically healthy, that’s still old. The average age of America is 38.9 years old. Biden is twenty-seven years older than the average first age of a president. The average age of death of a president – which excludes assassinated presidents for obvious reasons – is seventy-three. 

    Illness

    Presidents get ill. It can be cold, it can be flu, or it could be something much worse. No president had completed a term without an ailment, however minor. Some have sadly died, or been close.

    Whilst there is sometimes transparency, that is not always the case. A president being ill can have serious repercussions. People lose faith, stock markets crash and enemies pounce. It has taken years after their deaths to learn about how close some presidents have been to death, or the issues they have had. 

    George Washington nearly died before his presidency had really begun. In May 1790, a flu epidemic swept Philadelphia, and Washington fell desperately ill. With Martha by his side, Washington laboured day and night. Whilst a physician slipped in through a side entrance so as not to provoke panic, rumours spread, and it was widely known amongst politicians that Washington was at death’s door. Luckily, he soon recovered, and lived another nine years. This was just the first example of cover-ups.

    William Henry Harrison performed a nearly two hour long inaugural speech in the pouring rain without a coat. Popular myth says that this was the cause of Harrison’s death, but this is incorrect. The cause of his illness actually came from a walk in swampy D.C a few weeks later. The weather was bad again, and Harrison did not change his wet clothes upon coming home. He soon became ill with what became pneumonia. Doctors tried old treatments such as cupping and bloodletting, but things only got worse.

    Whilst there were no official updates from the government, rumours still spread, and people prayed for Harrison’s recovery. Unfortunately, that recovery never came. On the 4th April 1841, the sixty-eight year old William Henry Harrison became the first sitting president to die. His official cause of death is pneumonia, though some historians believe it was typhoid. Whatever the case, anyone walking around in bad weather without a coat would have been ill-advised to do so, whatever their age.

    On a boiling hot 4th July celebration, Zachary Taylor enjoyed cherries and milk. Over several days, Taylor experienced agonising stomach cramps. His symptoms- fever, dehydration and diarrhoea- got worse, and doctors diagnosed cholera. On the 9th July 1850, Zachary Taylor. 

    Whilst doctors at the time diagnosed cholera, other factors may have caused his death. The sewage systems of D.C were poor, and his drinks were likely infected with bacteria. It may not have been cholera, as historians and scientists have guessed typhoid, gastroenteritis or even poisoning by Southerners. The latter theory is so prevalent that his body was exhumed in 1991, with results disproving this theory. 

    On the 14th April 1865, Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth. He was shot in the head, with the bullet hitting his brain. Lincoln collapsed and never regained consciousness. It was immediately clear that this was a mortal wound, and the only thing that could be done was making him comfortable.

    Abraham Lincoln died nine hours later on the 15th. As the death was almost instant, there was no chance of a cover-up. The public learned of the news quickly, and it spread across the nation with equal speed. 

    Historians and doctors have debated Lincoln’s health, but nothing would have helped him or made it worse in this case, as it was a wound that would have been probably fatal even today. 

    On the 2nd July 1881, James A. Garfield was shot by Charles Guiteau. For two and a half months, Garfield lingered in agony. If such a thing had happened today, he would have likely survived. Unfortunately, doctors of the day made him a victim of what we would charitably call malpractice. With their gloveless hands, they prodded the bullet wound and Garfield’s insides. Doctors allowed an x-Ray machine, but it was in the wrong area, plus the bed was metal. For eighty days, Garfield alternated between health and illness.

    James A. Garfield died on the 19th September 1881. The fatal blow was sepsis, a disease that kills many even today. Guiteau argued that had merely shot Garfield, and that the doctors had killed him. Unfortunately, that is not a legal argument, however technically true it may have been.

    The American public followed Garfield’s illness closely over the months. Whilst the doctors were not open about Garfield’s illness to the public, they would likely have known it was serious. His death was a shock- whilst Lincoln had been shot at the tail end of the American Civil War, the popular Garfield had been shot in peacetime.   

    In about October 1882, Chester A. Arthur was diagnosed with Bright’s disease, a kidney ailment that could kill him at any time. Arthur managed to keep this a secret, but died from the disease a year and a half after leaving the presidency. 

    In June 1893, Grover Cleveland noticed a lump on the roof of his mouth. A biopsy revealed that it was cancerous. Cleveland was concerned that the news would send both the stock market and the public into a panic, especially after it had become a feared disease following Ulysses S. Grant’s death nearly a decade earlier. It was decided that a removal operation would be secretly held under the guise of a holiday.

    A month later, Cleveland and a small entourage boarded a friend’s yacht, The Oneida. Six surgeons took an hour and a half to remove it. Their method, along with Cleveland’s moustache, kept it hidden. Whilst people tittered about Cleveland’s ‘holiday,’ the administration managed to quash the rumours.

    Cleveland died of an unrelated illness a decade later. Fourteen years after that, one of his doctors spilled the beans. 

    On the 6th September 1901, William McKinley was shot by Leon Czolgosz. Whilst one bullet missed, the other hit his stomach. When McKinley arrived at the nearest hospital, there were no physicians on scene. When they did arrive, the operation to remove the bullet was performed in a darkened room with rudimentary equipment. Unfortunately, they could not find the bullet. 

    Whilst it looked like McKinley would recover, he soon faltered. His pancreas had become necrotic and gangrene settled in his stomach. On the 14th September, William McKinley died as a result of complications.

    The public was relieved by news that McKinley was recovering, as that was what his doctors genuinely believed. His death would have come as quite a shock, to both them and the people. Medicine in 1901 would not have saved McKinley’s life, especially since he was obese with a heart condition. Today might have been different. 

    In October 1919, Woodrow Wilson suffered from a severe stroke which blinded him in one eye and paralysed him down his left side. In the days following this, Wilson’s health declined rapidly, as fevers and a UTI nearly killed him. Whilst he recovered, Wilson was out of sorts for the next six months at least. For the rest of his presidency, his wife Edith, his doctor Grayson and a small group kept his illness secret. The public had no idea. The cabinet was prevented from seeing him. When Secretary Robert Lansing held cabinet meetings without him present, and tried to force Vice President Thomas Marshall into the top job, Wilson asked for his resignation upon Edith’s request.

    Whilst Wilson was eventually able to leave his desk, Edith maintained control of the presidency, at least to some extent. The public was bought off with excuses such as flu, stress and being busy. Wilson wanted to run for a third term and believed that he would win, but this did not happen. He died three years after his term ended.

    On a stop in Seattle during a tour, Warren G. Harding fell ill. The group skipped the Portland stop and went onto San Francisco, where Harding convalesced. Reports did not indicate anything serious was happening, as doctors believed that he would be fine. He was encouraging his wife to read some positive newspaper coverage on the 2nd August 1921 when he suddenly convulsed and dropped to the bed. Florence Harding ran for help, but it was too late- he was dead before he’d hit the bed. 

    Doctors diagnosed a cerebral hemorrhage, as heart attacks were poorly understood. Any chance of knowing the truth of his death died when Florence Harding refused an autopsy. This led to accusations of Florence poisoning her husband. 

    Today, Harding likely would have been diagnosed with heart problems earlier, and his symptoms would have led to quick treatment. 

    In 1921, Franklin D. Roosevelt came down with a nasty illness. After weeks of fevers, bladder problems and sensitive skin, Roosevelt mostly recovered. The only problem was that he was now essentially paralysed in his lower body. At the time, doctors believed that he had polio, but many now believe that he had Guillain-Barré syndrome. 

    Roosevelt spent the rest of his life hiding his disability. He used a variety of tricks to hide this- steel braces on his legs, holding onto things, destroying press cameras or just sitting down. The vast majority of Americans would have no clue that their president could not walk unaided. 

    Towards the end of his twelve-year presidency, Roosevelt was clearly close to the edge. A medical examination towards the end of his third term showed that Roosevelt had bronchitis, heart failure, high blood pressure and reduced lung capacity. When Harry S. Truman was chosen as his third vice president, it was partly with the understanding that he’d be ready to take over- though Truman did not know this. 

    The public was not aware of the extent of Roosevelt’s poor health until he returned from Yalta in February 1945. Three months later, on the 12th April, Roosevelt was in his vacation home at Warm Springs, Georgia, posing for a portrait. Roosevelt remarked that he had a ‘terrific headache’ before collapsing. He lost consciousness and never regained it, dying only a few hours later.

    Roosevelt had a cerebral hemorrhage, something that would kill most people today even with prompt medical attention. Despite his myriad of illnesses, it was a sudden death. America was shocked by the death of the man who had been their leader for so long and was leading them towards the end of WW2. Harry S. Truman was no less shocked to learn of his boss’ death- and the fact that there were plans to nuke Japan.  

    Early on 24th September 1955, Dwight D. Eisenhower woke with chest pains. An ECG confirmed a heart episode and he was rushed to hospital. A heart attack was diagnosed, necessitating nearly two months of hospital stay before his release on the 11th November.

    Eisenhower had been unusually open about his heart attack, keeping the public frequently updated with news about his health. Whilst he was transparent, the seriousness of the heart attack was kept secret as not to cause concerns.

    Eisenhower would suffer a minor stroke in 1957, but returned to work quickly. He had suffered a heart attack in 1955 and by August 1968, he’d had seven, four of which had occurred relatively close together. Dwight D. Eisenhower died of congestive heart failure in 1969. 

    John F. Kennedy was probably the sickest US President. A list of his ailments include:

    The Kennedy family hushed up his illnesses. During the 1960 campaign, it’s believed someone tried to break into the offices of Max Jacobson, aka “Dr. Feelgood,” Kennedy’s physician to obtain his medical records. Jacobson regularly injected Kennedy with medicines. Despite everyone close to Kennedy disliking and distrusting Jacobson, the President himself said his treatments were the only thing that helped the pain. Jacobson would lose his medical license in 1975. 

    Kennedy was regularly ill during his presidency, including during the infamous Cuban Missile Crisis. It was a miracle that he had not died of illness at that point. Unfortunately, it all came to an end on the 22nd November 1963. As he sat in a motorcade in downtown Dallas, Texas, shots rang out. The first hit his back, through his neck and lung before leaving his throat. The second went through the back of his head, through his skull and out of the side. Kennedy collapsed, brain decorating the car.

    He was rushed to hospital, where it was clear that the wound would kill him. Doctors did some treatments, but nothing worked. For the fifth and final time, he received Last Rites. John F. Kennedy was dead.

    Today, many people don’t believe the official story that Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone wolf, especially since he was soon assassinated by Jack Ruby. Whatever that version of events, Kennedy’s poor health was covered up throughout his life. 

    Just two months into his presidency on the 30th March 1981, Ronald Reagan was shot. The bullet had deflected from his armoured vehicle and hit him in the chest. Secret Service agents rushed him into the car as several other men were hit. All seemed fine until Reagan coughed up blood. They rushed him to the hospital. Reagan seemed fine as he walked in, but he immediately collapsed in the lobby.

    Surgeons worked to save Reagan’s life. Whilst it is believed that his good health for his age helped him, it was not revealed for some time that he was on the verge of death, having lost a lot of blood. Fortunately for all involved (except John Hinckley), Reagan survived, and was back to work within months.

    On the 5th November 1994, five years after leaving the presidency,  Reagan announced that he had Alzheimer’s. It’s believed that this has started, or was at least present, during his administration, though medical professionals don’t believe this to be the case. Some have reported that he suffered from memory lapses and forgetfulness as President, but nothing so bad as to cause alarm. 

    Reagan died on the 5th June 2004 as a result of pneumonia, complicated by Alzheimer’s.

    As you can see, cover-ups have long been part of the presidential agenda. One must remember that the public does not always know the whole picture. Joe Biden will not be the last president whose age and cognitive abilities will be questioned.

    Exit mobile version