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I have been watching a CNN programme on You Tube that mentioned that Calvin Coolidge suffered clinical depression for the later period of his presidency. The trigger was the death of his favourite, son, aged 16. Coolidge became withdrawn, sleeping 18 hours, cut himself off from friends and family, and was effectively unable to do his job.
A number of US leaders have suffered mental problems in office. Nixon's staff became concerned at the President was suffering a depressive phrase towards the end and may not have been able to function. Ronald Reagan began showing preliminary signs of Alzheimers in his second term. Harold Wilson, another prominent sufferer of Alzheimers, also showed signs of it in his last year or two in office - his sudden resignation was thought by some aides to be linked to a realisation by him that something was wrong and he needed to bow out of public office before things got worse.
Pope John Paul II also showed limited mental capacity at the end of his reign. The President, Mary McAleese, at an audience with him mentioned the Irish College, a favourite place of his for years in his days as a bishop and cardinal. To her surprise he looked a bit puzzled and asked where was that. An aide told him it was near the St John Lateran. He still looked puzzled and some there got the impression that he was no longer able to recognise the St John Lateran, his cathedral as pope and a place he had visited thousands of times in his lifetime.
Pope Pius XII also showed some evidence of confusion at the end of his life. In one newsreal not shown in his lifetime (because of what it captured) but shown a couple of years ago on RAI, Pius was seen addressing a crowd at Castelgandolfo. He mentioned England and some English pilgrims cheered. They startled him and he suddenly looked completely confused as to where he was or what was happening. He began looking around him almost panicky, and then slipped into the traditional papal ritual of blessing people, but it was an odd sort of blessing, not aimed at those below his balcony, but to the left, to the right, even above him, while looking confused around him. The programme had showed Pius to be a highly theatrical and charismatic figure, who carefully crafted his image. That one image, years after most of his most striking images and close to his eventual death, was astonishingly different - he looked completely out-of-it.
There is a suspected case in Ireland too. In 1976 the President of Ireland, Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh, resigned over an attack by a Defence minister. Historians who have read Ó Dálaigh's private papers have suspicions though that in the week or two before his resignation, and in its aftermath, he either suffered a nervous breakdown or was on the brink of it. His never easy-to-read handwriting became grotesque, and shrunk in size (his handwriting was previously bizarrely large) till it was tiny. A man with a famous linguistic skill (albeit with woeful spelling!) in the run-up to his resignation seemed unable to string a coherent sentence together in his papers, with bizarre half-sentences, weird paranoia, and delusions about himself, including starting to write about himself in the third person, something he never did before. It isn't known if he was seeing a doctor in those days, but the bizarre contents of his papers suggest he wasn't well mentally in the run-up to the resignation - he spent the weekend before the resignation writing a number of resignation letters, all on different topics, before finally deciding to resign on Donegan.
Those old enough will remember also his strange behaviour when interviewed by an RTÉ journalist about his resignation. He stood with his arms criss-crossed over himself in an a very protective childlike manner - the nearest visual equivalent I can think of it is in the old pictures of people arrested in the 19th century and photographed by the police. They would have to stand that way to show off what their hands looked like in the pictures. I have never seen anyone but Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh in that pose ever do an interview anywhere.
The issue raises an interesting point - what does a leader do, or do those around him do, if he or she shows signs of mental impairment? Coolridge's clinical depression could have been treated. So it wasn't something that would have necessitated his removal, just a temporary stepping back from the role. So while removal from office may be the only solution where the impairment is permanent and progressive (as with Reagan's alzheimers) what can be done if the impairment is temporary and treatable?
Any thoughts or observations?
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Originally Posted by DeGaulle 2.0
