The Trump presidency is nowhere near25th-Amendment territory.
ANY political system that puts great power in the hands of a single person must also reckon with the problem that creates. It is sensible to make provision to remove the king or president from office if he becomes incapacitated. Yet the existence of such a provision also risks inviting a coup. The framers of the constitution were acutely aware of this, and decided to fudge it. Meanwhile, in Britain, George III’s bouts of mania invited questions about who is really in charge when the monarch is on the throne but out of his mind. Speculation about President Donald Trump’s mental state, ever-present since before his election, increased when he tweeted that his nuclear button was “much bigger” than Kim Jong-Un’s. Being Mr Trump, he followed up with his own self-analysis, declaring that he is a “very stable genius”.
Most psychiatrists are wary about pronouncing on the mental state of people they have not examined, but that has not stopped a few from having a go at Mr Trump. Bandy Lee, a psychiatrist at Yale and editor of a book called “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump”, briefed members of Congress before Christmas. More than 50 Democrats have signed up to a bill to compel the 45th president to submit to an examination of his fitness for office.
Speculation about what is on the president’s mind begins with assertions that he might be in the early stages of dementia. Those who argue this begin with the observation that the president’s father had Alzheimer’s disease. That is not, by itself, strong evidence. There is a version of Alzheimer’s that is almost guaranteed to be passed on from parent to child, but it tends to show up in people in their 40s and 50s. The other strains are less strongly heritable, meaning family history is a useful part of a diagnosis, but not more than that.
This story is from the January 13th-19th 2018 edition of The Economist.
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This story is from the January 13th-19th 2018 edition of The Economist.
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