President One of Many with Tumor

Ocean County Observer

August 5, 1985

One of the media marvels is how a news blackout can erupt by either a hijacking or the illness of a president. Having heard or read about the illness of President Reagan continually for the past two weeks, the realization suddenly struck that nuclear war could be blacked out by the president’s bowel problems.

The fact is that the president is just one of the many who have tumors, and the chances are that, whatever the tumor, the president will be around to finish his term of office. Most cancer in the elderly is as sluggish as the general metabolism of the elderly which leaves Mr. Reagan plenty of time to be president. He only has 30 more months in office.

One surely must be more concerned about the death of a Soviet leader, because what survives is unpredictability. But the United States has a system of checks and balances so that the person of the president would be of little consequence. Our course is set, and like a giant iceberg, strong currents will make it veer only slightly.

From the medical point of view, President Reagan had a villous adenoma. They can be malignant, and this one apparently had some malignant components. But the majority of such lesions are removed without consequence. Surgery and anesthesia these days is slickly monitored and untoward effects occur only in the lowest percentile of those who submit to operations.

Certainly, of all the perfidious maladies cancer in a president must rank below severe heart attack, meningitis, stroke, assassination, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, or the tertiary stages of syphilis, which I doubt would be admitted by the presidential spokesmen.

After all, a number of presidents have been ill, assassinated or died in office. My favorite is Benjamin Harrison who lasted about 30 days, but the nations somehow survived. Wasn’t it McKinley who had a cancer of the jaw, surgically and secretly trifled with one dark night on the presidential yacht?

Wilson supposedly had a stroke, shrouded in secrecy and the presidency was then run by Colonel House, although some say that Mrs. Wilson was the power behind the sick bed.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died of a sudden cerebral hemorrhage, a four term president, elected the last time as a very sick man, yet the nation survived handily as Mr. Truman, an unknown, stepped into the Oval Office.

President Kennedy didn’t make it through Texas, and President Johnson almost succeeded in creating the Great Society of which Kennedy dreamed, but became mired in Viet Nam instead. Would the course of things have differed had Kennedy lived? Probably not much.

In short there has been much ado monopolizing the airwaves about a common illness that afflicts millions of Americans. It proves that the president is human. It proves that the media is puerile.

At any rate, Mr. President, we wish you a speedy recovery and look forward to the day when you can turn on your television and enjoy a good episode of “Dallas” without having to hear about your illness. You seem to be the only one in the nation who is dealing with this matter sensibly.

But the hoopla has only 30 months to go. After you are out of office the media will be worrying about the warts of your successor.