The health of presidents, a constant state secret

When François Mitterrand came to power in 1981, he decided that transparency was going to prevail in everything related to his state of health, after notorious scandals for hiding serious illnesses from his predecessors in the French presidency, especially from Georges Pompidou.

Since then, every six months, detailed health bulletins were published which, according to the Elysee, collected "the information that the French have the right to expect from the man they have chosen to assume the highest office in the State."

It was an exercise in impeccable transparency with a not exactly small problem: it was all a lie, the newsletters were part of an elaborate concealment strategy.

Shortly before he was elected, Mitterrand's doctors detected cancer, which was not made public during his two seven-year power.

The French only learned in 1996, with the now deceased former president, that his personal physician, Claude Gubler, had hidden him for 14 years.

“In November 1981, I told the president that I had cancer that had spread through my bones.

'The state secret is imposed', he answered me, "Gubler told the magazine

.

The health of leaders poses a complex dichotomy between the right of citizens to have relevant information about the people who govern them, or who will elect to govern them, and the right to privacy.

But, in addition, there is no doubt that some diseases can be considered a sign of weakness (the fact of hiding them only increases the stigma that surrounds them).

In the case of serious ailments, they could affect the choices.

Would the French have equally voted for Mitterrand knowing that he had a cancer that could be treated (in fact, he was treated and could rule for 14 years)?

In dictatorships and absolute monarchies, the answer has been clear for centuries: the health of the leader is a secret.

The mysteries are sometimes so deep that historians have spent 2,000 years discussing the ailment that Julius Caesar may have suffered - probably epilepsy - without reaching a definitive conclusion.

However, in democracies it cannot be said that transparency always reigns.

The chaotic and contradictory details about the health of the president of the United States, Donald Trump, admitted last Friday to the Walter Reed hospital in Maryland suffering from covid-19 without anyone having been able to know his real state, reflect the way to communicate in the White House the "alternative facts", but also the enormous difficulties posed by informing clearly and transparently about the illnesses of the heads of State and Government.

Although the case of Trump, in a democracy, is extreme.

In the twilight of the USSR, dozens of Sovietologists were waiting for the smallest detail to try to guess the health of the gerontocratic leaders.

Now, dozens of journalists try to clarify in Washington between the contradictory statements, the evasive ones and even the fact that the president tweets or not.

Trump has also repeatedly mocked the health of his political opponents and has not tired of stigmatizing diseases.

In last week's debate, he despised his opponent, Joe Biden, for wearing a mask, which he considers a sign of weakness and not solidarity so as not to infect.

In 2016, he even laughed at Hillary Clinton for a persistent cough that led to pneumonia (a video that has circulated widely on social media shows him imitating the gait of someone sick during a rally).

It also didn't help that the then-Democratic candidate's campaign team tried unsuccessfully to minimize his ailments, until he fainted in public.

"This episode raises questions about Clinton's health and the transparency of her team during the last two months of the campaign," wrote

.

"For months Republicans have questioned the 68-year-old Clinton's health, claiming that she is ill from her coughing spells."

'The West Wing of the White House and Barlet's disease'

The controversies surrounding the health of American presidents have been so constant that they are even part of the plot of the now classic series on American politics,

: the fictional president Josiah Barlet suffers from multiple sclerosis and the Republicans accuse him of hiding it during the campaign and even promote a vote of no confidence.

John F. Kennedy suffered from all manner of ailments, in addition to chronic back pain, which were never made public, while Woodrow Wilson tried to downplay the great pandemic of 1918 - the so-called Spanish flu precisely because Spain was the first country to report it as it was not subjected to military censorship.

Wilson himself became seriously ill during a trip and the White House did its best to hide it.

In fact, some historians believe that he accepted the terms of the Treaty of Versailles because he was too ill to refute the theses of the French and English.

"There have always been controversies about the diseases of kings," explains historian and medievalist José Enrique Ruiz-Domènech, who is about to publish an essay entitled

(Taurus).

“The rule was clearly that you couldn't comment.

If there was a problem, the king would disappear from sight under the pretext of a hunt.

The kings, dignitaries and princes surrounded themselves with the best doctors, who knew the latest innovations, but also the herbalists.

This data was also kept secret ”.

However, what was possible in medieval monarchies, or in North Korea today (in April there was speculation about the death of Kim Jong-un and experts on the communist dictatorship came to examine satellite photos with the whereabouts of his private train to try to get some clue), it is increasingly difficult in a democracy.

Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe resigned in August due to health problems, which had already forced him to resign during his first term, in 2007. But the transparency shown then - as also during the hunting accident of King Juan Carlos I in Botswana — they are the exception rather than the rule.

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