Pod Insights Civics 101 Can the president legally hide their health status? About this episode The American public has long been on the lookout for unsteadiness in the leader of the free world. It's important to us (or, historically, has been) that the president seems, well, well. If not robust. Of course, the president is a human, and as such is not immune to malady.
So why do we care so much about the president's health? Are they under obligation, legal or otherwise, to keep us in the loop? What happens when they don't?
Our guide today is clinical ethicist Joel Wu.
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Transcript 6,289 words · 14 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:29 Hannah McCarthy? This is Civics 1-1. I'm Hannah McCarthy.
1:31 Nick Capodice? I'm Nick Cappadice.
1:32 Hannah McCarthy? And how are you feeling, Nick?
1:34 Nick Capodice? Oh, you know, I have my health.
1:37 Hannah McCarthy? Funny you should say that.
1:38 Nick Capodice? Why, don't I look well?
1:40 Hannah McCarthy? You're glowing. If you haven't got your health, you haven't got anything.
1:44 Nick Capodice? You know, that Count Rugen gets a bad rap, Hannah, but he was right on the money there.
1:48 Speaker 05 Get some rest. If you haven't got your health, you haven't got anything.
1:52 Hannah McCarthy? And there are some who might say, Nick, that is especially true of the president.
1:57 Nick Capodice? Ah.
1:58 Hannah McCarthy? Remember how early on in September there was all of a sudden this wild speculation that President Trump had died? And that nobody had told us.
2:08 Speaker 06 People didn't see you for a couple days. 1.3 million user engagements as of Saturday morning about your demise.
2:15 Speaker 07 Really? I didn't see that.
2:16 Speaker 08 If you happened to peek on the social media at any point over the last few days, you may have seen, people started speculating that something bad happened to Donald Trump. You can see him declining faster and faster. The last few days, you woke up thinking there might be news. Just saying, just saying.
2:34 Speaker 09 Pictures of Trump's hands, he has had bruises on his hands. And we've also seen pictures of swollen ankles.
2:41 Speaker 07 And, no, I've been very active, actually, over the weekend. I didn't hear that one, that's pretty serious stuff.
2:50 Nick Capodice? Yeah, which should be an outrageous suggestion, Hannah, that the elected leader of the free world might die and nobody would tell us.
2:59 Hannah McCarthy? Perhaps, but maybe less outrageous than you might think. And we will get to that later. Suffice it to say, Trump had not died, but this moment did highlight America's obsession with his health. Photos of the president's bruised hands, swollen ankles, a diagnosis letter from his doctor. Social media was chock full with amateur investigators going bananas because the president hadn't done anything public for a few days.
3:25 Speaker 10 President Trump was not seen much by the public over the Labor Day weekend, prompting some speculation about his health.
3:31 Hannah McCarthy? So I got to thinking, you know, why is it that we, the people, feel like we're owed information about the president's health? Are we owed that information? The West Wing would certainly have us believe it.
3:46 Speaker 11 All the things that you could have kept from me. You haven't called me Jed since I was elected. Why didn't you tell me? Because I wanted to be the president.
3:56 Hannah McCarthy? As would, you know, real life.
3:59 Speaker 09 Where the Biden White House tried to hide the extent of his deterioration, an overall campaign to try to conceal from the American people the extent to which the president was really struggling to do his job.
4:12 Hannah McCarthy? And we know, presidents have concealed health problems in the past, which I will get to, and which certainly suggests that ill health is not necessarily the kind of thing that a president wants us to know about. But is the president obligated to tell us if something is wrong with their body or their mind? Are there laws about this? Rules about this?
4:40 Nick Capodice? Are there?
4:41 Hannah McCarthy? Well, it's murky. Either way, I went to someone who thinks about the shoulds and shouldn'ts of health and privacy quite a bit.
4:49 Speaker 05 My name is Joel Wu.
4:51 Hannah McCarthy? And a quick caveat.
4:52 Speaker 05 The disclosure that I'm only representing my understanding and my views and not of any of the institutions I work for or participate in.
4:58 Hannah McCarthy? Okay, so here's what Joel does.
5:00 Speaker 05 I'm a clinical ethics assistant professor at the University of Minnesota Center for Bioethics, where my job is primarily as a clinical ethicist for the M Health review system. A clinical ethicist?
5:12 Hannah McCarthy? Joel has studied law, public health, bioethics, genetics, biology, and all of that comes together to help us figure out what is right and what is wrong in the world of health. If we can even say what's right and what's wrong. So let's start with something basic. When we think about someone's health, anyone's health, privacy is important.
5:38 Speaker 05 Privacy is important in society generally, right? Because we need to be able to control the information that we have about ourselves to be able to control the relationships that we have with others. The things that my wife knows about me, I don't want my friends to know about me. The things that my doctor knows about me, I may not want law enforcement to know about me. The things that my lawyer know about me, I don't necessarily want my employer to know about me, right? And so within all of these relationships, there are special kinds of information that affect how we relate to each other and the kind of power that may exist in that relationship.
6:14 Hannah McCarthy? It's not just doctors, by the way.
6:16 Speaker 05 But also lawyers, engineers, therapists. We rely on these really special professionals and we give them a certain kind of power because we need their help. Wait, hang on, did Joel just say engineers?
6:29 Hannah McCarthy? Yeah, I had never heard of this before. Like attorney-client privilege, sure. But engineers, not so much. I looked it up. It is because engineers often learn confidential business information when they're working for someone and they are not supposed to spread it around without consent.
6:45 Speaker 05 Well, you learn something new every day.
6:47 Hannah McCarthy? And the point of all of this is that without confidentiality, we wouldn't trust these people. And if we can't trust them?
6:54 Nick Capodice? Well, if you haven't got their trust, you haven't got anything.
6:57 Speaker 05 Right? If I can't be truthful with the doctor about my condition, my symptoms, my exposures, my habits, he's not going to be able to help me. It's the same with a therapist. If I don't tell him what's going on in my head, he's not going to be able to help me. She's not going to be able to help me. Same with a lawyer. The problem in these relationships is
7:20 Speaker 05 if we don't feel safe telling them the truth about our condition, then they can't help us. And the whole enterprise of medicine or law or mental health falls apart. And we might be scared to tell them everything if we feel like they're going to tell other people. So if the doctors start telling law enforcement, if the lawyers start telling our neighbors, then we're not going to trust them with our information. And if we don't trust them with our information, then they can't actually effectively help us.
7:52 Nick Capodice? You know, if you think about what makes someone a best friend, someone who, over the course of your life, you feel closer to, you trust more and more, confidentiality and reliability are two major factors in that. We keep coming back to someone who is a safe keeper of our thoughts, feelings, vulnerabilities.
8:12 Hannah McCarthy? Right, and when someone violates that trust, it's like a slap in the face. Where do you put your secrets now? However, sticking with health here, confidentiality does get a little tricky. Because yes, a doctor is supposed to keep your information to themselves, but they are also supposed to keep people alive and well.
8:36 Speaker 05 It's not an absolute kind of privacy, right? And there are not necessarily exceptions, but important uses. Where those sorts of unauthorized or involuntary disclosures of your health information are necessary. And that can be to prevent harm to others. If we know that you're going to cause harm to somebody else, potentially harm to the community, there are public health reasons, including things like mandatory reporting of infectious diseases.
9:04 Hannah McCarthy? This is actually something controlled by state and local regulation. So if you show up to your doctor in Tennessee, for example, and you have the measles, that doctor has to report it to the state health department.
9:18 Nick Capodice? All right, so when I read a headline about tuberculosis in Maine the other day.
9:22 Hannah McCarthy? That is because doctors reported it once they had confirmed cases. It's a piece of health information, and it should be shared to try to keep the illness from spreading to the community. There's also this principle called duty to warn, or duty to protect.
9:39 Nick Capodice? All right, this is the harm to themselves or others thing?
9:42 Hannah McCarthy? Yeah, it started with a California Supreme Court case called Tarasoff, the Regents of the University of California. Now, that case was specifically about mental health practitioners in that state and warning a person or authorities if a patient of theirs is a danger to somebody. The court said, quote, "The protective privilege ends where the public peril begins," unquote. And various states and various courts have adopted versions of this principle as well, but it is not an across-the-board thing.
10:11 Nick Capodice? Federalism.
10:13 Hannah McCarthy? Federalism. So those are the basic principles of doctor-patient confidentiality and breaching that confidentiality when it comes to protecting a person or the community. But now we have to get into the stranger, bigger question. What happens when that community is everybody in the country? And that patient is the leader of the free world?
10:39 Speaker 05 What's really, really unclear is whether or not we can draw analogies from harm to somebody who might be the victim of domestic violence, or somebody who may be inappropriately or otherwise, in a way, unknowingly exposed to like HIV, right? Those are more clear. Can we analogize that victim of domestic violence? Or can we analogize that person who may have been inappropriately and surreptitiously exposed to HIV to the entire political community, to society as a whole? Right? Because it's more clear when the physician or the therapist says, "I gotta prevent this harm to this individual." What does it mean for the president's physician to think about the society as a whole,
11:23 Speaker 05 our governmental institutions?
11:27 Nick Capodice? All right, so if the president is physically or mentally ill, we don't have an established rule or law that says the doctor has to tell someone?
11:38 Hannah McCarthy? This, Nick, is the unanswered question. If the president tells a doctor, "I'm gonna end that guy's life," for example, well, first you have to look at the local law. Now, let's say this happens in DC, which has a, quote, "permissive duty to warn." A doctor only has to sound the alarm if it seems like an emergency. And, by the way, this specifically applies to mental health specialists.
12:01 Nick Capodice? Wait, but how do you know it's an emergency?
12:04 Hannah McCarthy? The doctor has to assess that, but that doctor is talking to the President of the United States in this case. And the president's doctor is not typically, and not currently, a mental health specialist. They are, however, typically, and currently, a military doctor. And the president is commander in chief of the military.
12:25 Nick Capodice? So the president could give orders to that doctor, right? Orders like, "Ignore whatever legal or ethical duty you have."
12:32 Hannah McCarthy? In theory. But generally, we're not talking about something as specific as the president threatening one person. We're talking about what it means for all of us if the president is ill.
12:43 Speaker 05 So when should it be disclosed? What kind of information should be disclosed? And why should it be disclosed, based on what we, as voters and as citizens of this country, have some interest in knowing before we choose who to vote for? Or whether we think they can even hold the office effectively anymore?
13:04 Nick Capodice? But we do have the 25th Amendment, which says that if the president is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, "The Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as acting president."
13:16 Hannah McCarthy? It says more than that. The president can voluntarily and temporarily sign over the duties of the presidency to the vice president if they know they're going to be under anesthesia, or they're going to be otherwise unable to execute their duties as president. The other way to do it takes the vice president and a majority of either the heads of the executive departments or Congress to declare the president unable to discharge their duties. And then the president is allowed to say, actually, guys, I'm totally fine, and take their job back.
13:48 Nick Capodice? And then, again, you need the veep and a majority to stop the president from regaining office.
13:55 Hannah McCarthy? And all of this might be contingent on what the president's physician chooses to tell people. So when Joel weighs this, the duty of the president's doctor, he thinks about the public's interest.
14:07 Speaker 05 So, I mean, the public's interest is sort of embedded in the idea that you have effective institutions, right? And if they can't fulfill the role within the institution, then the effectiveness of the institution is compromised. It's sort of a vague idea, right? But the whole idea, you can think about other institutions like the justice system. If you have a judge in a courtroom who is not able to effectively apply the rules of civil procedure or evidence, your whole trial gets impaired, right? Or if it's a jury trial and you have one jury member who isn't paying attention or is coming in drunk or something, then you really, really have questions about whether or not that particular trial came to the right finding, or the right, you know, whether
14:51 Speaker 05 or not a particular person was found liable or guilty or not. But then it brings into question the entire judicial enterprise, and it's the same with the government. We really, really want to have some certainty that the people that are in the roles can fulfill the roles that are created by the institution.
15:10 Nick Capodice? We want that, but it isn't our right, is it?
15:14 Hannah McCarthy? Not according to the Constitution. I mean, the president does take an oath to, quote, "faithfully execute the office of the President of the United States," and to "the best of their," quote, "ability," preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.
15:29 Nick Capodice? Which, I guess, honestly, could mean anything. Best of their ability, faithfully execute.
15:35 Hannah McCarthy? Shouldn't mean just anything, but could.
15:38 Nick Capodice? But Hannah, our current president is not the first person in this position. I know there is no clear, established process for disclosing the president's health, but surely, surely there's some precedent. I mean, the office might come with some immunity, but that doesn't apply to health.
15:54 Hannah McCarthy? Oh, we'll get to that after a quick break.
15:57 Nick Capodice? All right, but before that break, a reminder that there are plenty of rules and regulations that we can sink our teeth into, and that sometimes that's a nice thing to do when there's an ever-widening wiggle room in the government. And you can read all about those rules and regulations and our history and all that in our book, "A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works." We have to know how it works, people. We have to know.
16:31 Nick Capodice? Haven't you out there ever Googled your own name? Like, actually done it? You'll find your address, your phone number, maybe even that police report from the time you went to see "Rain Man" in the movie theater, but you were underage? Maybe that one's just me. But here's the thing. There are companies called "data brokers" whose entire business model is collecting your personal information and selling it to advertisers, to strangers, sometimes to people running scams. And once your data's out there, it just keeps circulating. That is where Incogni comes in. Incogni contacts data brokers on your behalf and sends them removal requests over and over, so your info doesn't just pop right back up. You set it up once, and they keep working in the background.
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19:05 Hannah McCarthy? We're back. We're talking about the president's health and when we are supposed to know about it and why. And who is supposed to tell us and whether they have to. And before the break, Nick, you asked me about President Precedent. Because we've had flesh and blood in the Oval Office before. And it's not brass impregnable. So what has happened in the past when the president is sick?
19:29 Speaker 05 Historians have actually done a really interesting job documenting even pre-Civil War, all the way through Kennedy and Reagan. The kinds of essentially deceptions and the sense of the kinds of non-disclosures of the president's health status and condition that may actually affect their ability to fulfill the role of the presidency. This was the case with Roosevelt. For we cannot be a strong nation unless we are a healthy nation.
20:00 Nick Capodice? Right, FDR had polio, right?
20:02 Hannah McCarthy? Actually, I recently learned that that's a maybe. Modern doctors think it may have been something else, but at the time, that was the diagnosis. Now, this was not strictly a secret, but when FDR was elected president, his press secretary forbid the media from taking pictures of him in his wheelchair. He used braces when he stood at a podium. The overwhelming message was, "We're not gonna talk about this." And with some exceptions, it wasn't a story. Now, just before FDR ran for a fourth term-
20:33 Nick Capodice? Which, by the way, was a break with tradition that spurred Congress to pass the 22nd Amendment and limit presidents to two terms.
20:39 Hannah McCarthy? Right, FDR was the only president who ever served beyond two terms. George Washington set the standard, and Thomas Jefferson repeatedly pointed out that without presidential term limits, we'd end up with a lifelong president, maybe even an hereditary presidency. But then FDR came along and just kept on running. So at the end of his third term, FDR is about to run again, and he is diagnosed as being seriously ill. And his doctor doesn't go out there and tell the American public. The president runs, he's elected, and he dies in office.
21:11 Nick Capodice? So people didn't know how sick he was when they voted for him?
21:14 Hannah McCarthy? His doctors kept it to themselves, the White House press corps played it close to the vest, and Harry Truman became our president and the inheritor of World War II, less than three months into FDR's term. Now, did the man have his reasons for concealing these health problems? Of course, they always do.
21:32 Speaker 05 This was the case with Eisenhower-
21:34 Hannah McCarthy? When Dwight Eisenhower had a heart attack in office, reporters were initially told that he had a, quote, "digestive upset." Even after the public learned the truth, a cardiologist told Eisenhower that he probably shouldn't run again. Eisenhower ignored this.
21:49 Speaker 05 This is the case with Kennedy.
21:50 Hannah McCarthy? John F. Kennedy was in perpetual pain and ill health. He took a ton of medications to manage it, but his brand was youth, health, vitality. So the public was kept out of the loop. When Woodrow Wilson had a stroke and woke up partially paralyzed, his wife, Edith, quietly ran the presidency from his bedside until the end of his term for well over a year.
22:12 Speaker 05 Anyway, all of this, it's been a pretty challenging issue. The public's views on it, I think, have evolved. I would say it's interesting because there is, I think, a pretty good study from Gallup in 2004 that showed that overwhelmingly, people have an interest. They want to know about the president's health status or aspects of the president's health status.
22:39 Hannah McCarthy? The same study showed that while many people believe the president does have a right to medical privacy, just like everyone else, around four out of 10 people believe that the president should still disclose their medical records.
22:51 Nick Capodice? So we do care if the president is healthy because it has an impact on whether that person can actually do the job.
22:59 Speaker 05 What I think is really interesting, though, is that I think that may actually be changing in that it may be the case that what the public actually knows may not necessarily affect how they vote, and it may not actually affect whether or not they think a particular president is in a position where they can effectively discharge the office.
23:21 Nick Capodice? Hannah, this reminds me of something I've been reading a ton about lately. People don't necessarily vote their self-interests. They vote their values, and those two things may be completely at odds.
23:34 Hannah McCarthy? And Joel mentioned something that I think makes that idea even more nuanced than it might seem.
23:40 Speaker 05 There is an analogy that can be drawn between informed consent to treatment in a hospital setting to the consent of the community to be governed, right? The idea that the government exists and functions at the consent of the governed. The thing is, you can't provide informed consent to surgery unless they tell you. What the surgery is for, what the burdens and benefits are, what the likelihood is of success or failure as opposed to non-treatment. Similarly, if we don't tell voters or the community about a particular president's capacities or aspects of it, then they don't actually have informed consent to their government.
24:22 Speaker 05 The real challenger, though, is similar to medicine. There may be people who you give the opportunity to provide informed consent, but they either lack the capacity to make a good decision about whether or not they should be treated, or they make decisions that are inconsistent with their own best interests. And I'm concerned that that may actually be the case in community.
24:43 Nick Capodice? So there are people who, even if they have all the information they need to make the right decision for themselves, may not have the ability to make the right decision, for whatever reason.
24:53 Hannah McCarthy? Well, we talk about this all the time in a way, Nick. We tell people to do their research on a candidate, get to know them, how they've behaved in the past, how they've voted, or what their policies are, or just generally how they've been in their communities. Now, that's one step, and it's a step many people never take. But even if people do take that step, step two is assessing that information. For example, Senator B is running for president, and Senator B votes like this and has X, Y, and Z health conditions and did, you know, A, B, and C in the community. But do we know what that means, what that indicates,
25:34 Hannah McCarthy? how that senator's inclinations or capacity will help or harm us or our community? And if someone doesn't or cannot take both of those steps, are they giving informed consent to be governed by this person?
25:50 Nick Capodice? And this is assuming that a voter can actually access that information, and that that information is true.
25:56 Hannah McCarthy? And is the information we receive actually useful when it comes to determining whether or not someone would be a good president? Or is that information doing something else?
26:06 Speaker 05 What they do, how they do, and who gets what information disclosed to whom? That's really, really hard to resolve, right? Because, I mean, disclosing something about like somebody like if the president were to actually have like a psychotic break, that's one thing. But if it were disclosed, for example, that maybe the president has same-sex attraction or has a resolved history of depression, that's not actually actively interfering. Does that actually affect the discharge of the office? Or is that just going to stigmatize the person? Or is that just going to be used in a way to essentially smear people in public opinion? Right? So you have to be very, very thoughtful about what you actually want to know.
26:47 Speaker 05 Because some stuff may be inappropriate and used unfairly, whereas other stuff may actually be critically important.
26:53 Nick Capodice? Haven't you out there ever Googled your own name? Like, actually done it? You'll find your address, your phone number, maybe even that police report from the time you went to see Rain Man in the movie theater, but you were underage? Maybe that one's just me. But here's the thing. There are companies called data brokers, whose entire business model is collecting your personal information and selling it to advertisers, to strangers, sometimes to people running scams. And once your data's out there, it just keeps circulating. That is where Incogni comes in. Incogni contacts data brokers on your behalf and sends them removal requests over and over, so your info doesn't just pop right back up. You set it up once, and they keep working in the background.
27:38 Nick Capodice? You can even track the progress on a dashboard. And for our listeners, we have an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan. Just go to incogni.com/civics or use the code civics at checkout. There's a link in the episode description. Remember, they can't harm you if they can't find you.
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29:27 Nick Capodice? It seems to me, Hannah, like there's a lot riding on the president here. So if you take it all the way back to the top, this is a person who took an oath. An oath to faithfully execute the office of president. If they know something is wrong, something that could get in the way of that oath, and they don't tell people, like it seems many presidents have done, we have a big problem.
29:52 Hannah McCarthy? Which is why Joel says this kind of disclosure is a vital norm.
29:57 Speaker 05 Yeah, because I think norms are really important, regardless of whether or not there's a law that requires it. It might be that it's actually a really, really good practice, right? And so historically, for example, for a presidential candidate to disclose information about their health, or a president to disclose information about their finances, is really, really valuable information. And it's not required by law. You do it because you want to show the voters, the community, that you're trustworthy, and you want to be transparent about your fitness for the office. But the problem is, is that you do it in good faith, recognizing that it does create a particular kind of opportunity for vulnerability or liability.
30:42 Speaker 05 Right? And as soon as one person says, "I'm not gonna do it," then it gives them an advantage.
30:49 Nick Capodice? Candidate A says, "Hey, everyone, just so you know, I have a heart condition." And candidate B, who also has a heart condition, is like, "No way am I telling anybody about that."
31:00 Speaker 05 And once it gives them an advantage, the other candidates aren't going to be inclined to disadvantage themselves in the way because you, in bad faith, didn't want to be transparent about the things that people might want to know about your fitness for the office. I mean, a lot of the stuff that we're talking about here is really not just about what's, you know, legal or illegal, it's about what's right or wrong, but it's also about what's right or wrong within the context of our government, a representative democracy. It's important for the people that participate in a representative democracy to be able to effectively believe that it is a functioning democracy and that our vote is informed by things that are truthful and relevant.
31:41 Speaker 05 And whether or not we rely and essentially hope that our candidates and our holders of public office are being truthful with us may no longer be sufficient, and that's really sad.
31:55 Nick Capodice? Hannah, I don't know if we're just talking about health anymore.
31:59 Hannah McCarthy? Well, if you think about Joel's point about the consent of the governed, I think the ability of a president to do the job faithfully comprises a lot of factors. They are reasonably fit of mind and body. They are not using the job for their own personal gain. They prioritize and protect the Constitution and the people and truth and rights. We can use presidential health, and whether we know about it and how much, as a useful lens. If the president conceals the things that make for an unfit leader of the free world, what can we do?
32:37 Speaker 05 I think as a community, we really gotta start thinking about how we might change that. But the only way you could change that is through the institutions of the government itself. Because you would have to hope that, for example, there might be a law passed by Congress or something might come from a federal agency or an executive order, you know, you don't know. So it's really concerning because it's like a self-governing thing.
33:08 Hannah McCarthy? Joel told me that in 1994, there was this working group on presidential disability.
33:13 Speaker 05 They were talking about the kinds of solutions or remedies for how to resolve whether or not a president was disabled and was no longer able to discharge the powers of the office related to the 25th amendment.
33:27 Nick Capodice? Okay, I'm glad we're coming back to the 25th amendment here because the Constitution does tell us what to do when the president cannot discharge the powers and duties of office. And the president is, at the end of the day, just a human being, albeit with pretty good medical care. But still, a human being and a stressful job who is probably 45 years old or older.
33:49 Hannah McCarthy? Sometimes a lot older. So this working group Joel is talking about basically said, "Look, we have the 25th amendment. Medical experts and family members and close associates can help to decide if the president is compromised. The president should make honest, accurate disclosures to the public, and we should destigmatize using the 25th. Just make sure the office can be executed faithfully."
34:13 Nick Capodice? And?
34:14 Hannah McCarthy? Well, the 25th amendment has been invoked six times since it was passed. Only three times since this working group got together. George W. Bush used it during two colonoscopies and Joe Biden during one.
34:29 Nick Capodice? So the 25th amendment was adopted when exactly?
34:32 Hannah McCarthy? 1967.
34:34 Nick Capodice? And we've had how many presidents since then?
34:36 Hannah McCarthy? Including Lyndon B. Johnson, who was president. Until 1969, there have been 12 presidencies and 11 presidents.
34:43 Nick Capodice? All right, so in almost 60 years, there were only three times that a president was not fully capable of their duties?
34:51 Hannah McCarthy? That is not what I'm saying. That is ostensibly what they were saying.
34:55 Speaker 05 And then in 2020, Nancy Pelosi actually proposed the commission, which is interesting because it's the idea of creating institutions. That are charged with being able to resolve this question of what kind of information we need to know about the president's health, how we know that they're no longer able to discharge the powers of the office, and what we tell the public. Right? And it should probably be something that's politically neutral. It should probably have experts in medicine and law and in ethics.
35:22 Nick Capodice? Because the president is flesh and blood and things happen. Hold on, Hannah. Does the president have sick days?
35:30 Hannah McCarthy? No.
35:31 Nick Capodice? All right. So again, in 60 years, with three exceptions, everybody just worked through every illness, every health condition, and was never unconscious for surgery.
35:41 Hannah McCarthy? Hey, it's possible. Look at the parents of toddlers. Anyway, Pelosi proposes this commission to create protocols and steps and clarity re the president's health.
35:50 Speaker 05 You know, that hasn't come to fruition.
35:57 Nick Capodice? So as of right now, Hannah, where are we? How do we know if the person in office can actually do the job, should actually do the job?
36:06 Speaker 05 So we're in a position right now where we essentially are vulnerable to, you know, hoping that our candidates and the people that hold office are ethical. And that's a really scary place to be.
36:20 Nick Capodice? If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.
36:26 Hannah McCarthy? Thank you, James Madison. You know, if our presidents are never all that sick, maybe that's exactly what's going on.
36:32 Nick Capodice? Angels in the Oval Field.
36:33 Hannah McCarthy? Yeah, that's probably not what's going on.
36:37 Nick Capodice? Probably not.
36:54 Hannah McCarthy? This episode was produced by me, Hannah McCarthy, with Nick Capodice. Marina Hanke is our producer. Rebecca Lavoy is our executive producer. Music in this episode by Epidemic Sound. A friendly reminder that we are your civics podcast. We are here to help us all understand this nation that we're living in today. If you've got questions, you can submit them at civics101podcast.org. We're going to do our best to answer everything we can. Civics 101 is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.
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