Nothing's Shocking
I was the guest columnist for the Oppo File newsletter in June 2024. This post originally appeared in the newsletter on June 4, 2024. This post also appears on the blog at GeoffEmbler.com.
How honest can candidates be about mental health?
The Question Unasked
With the recent tragic death by suicide of professional golfer Grayson Murray, I was struck by how much the public conversation in America has changed regarding mental health. Before his death, Murray was very public about his struggles with depression and other mental health challenges. Other athletes, such as Simone Biles and Michael Phelps, have openly discussed their mental health challenges as well.
But mental health exists in a different context when it comes to politics, where voters get to express their opinion through their votes, and the stakes are considered higher. Politics has often been far from kind to those struggling with their mental health. Furthermore, medical records aren't accessible by opposition researchers through any legal means. So, vetting candidates or opponents in this area depends on the candidates' disclosure. The scrappiest researcher couldn't get that information or confirm anonymous tips.
When George McGovern arrived in Miami for the 1972 Democratic convention, he didn't yet have a complete lock on the nomination and, thus, hadn't picked a running mate. When asked, several of McGovern's Senate colleagues turned him down for the VP job. But there was Sen. Tom Eagleton (D-MO), a young rising star and outspoken critic of the Vietnam War who had also been the youngest attorney general ever elected in Missouri history. As a devout Catholic, Eagleton could also help solve McGovern's problems with working-class Catholics.
Former Sen. Gary Hart (D-CO), then McGovern's campaign manager, told NPR the campaign didn't do background checks on prospective VPs:
"We went over names casually, didn't do any 'background checking,' " Hart says. "It wasn't mandated in those days as it is now. Certainly after '72 it came to be mandated. But the people trusted other people's word."
As it happened, Eagleton didn't voluntarily disclose any personal issues to the McGovern campaign either.
Several days after McGovern picked Eagleton as his running mate, the McGovern campaign and the Detroit Free Press received anonymous calls prompting them to look into Eagleton's medical history. After inquiring with Eagleton's team, the McGovern campaign learned that Eagleton had been hospitalized for depression on three occasions in the 1960s, during which he also received electroconvulsive therapy, a.k.a. "shock treatment."
Hart told NPR that the political problem wasn't discussing mental health (which one imagines would have been very different then as compared to now) but rather a candidate's suitability to handle the Cold War:
"This was the height of the Cold War," Hart says. "The key here wasn't how do we feel about mental illness or therapy or anything like that. The key was — finger on the button."
Eagleton later discussed his mental health history in a public statement, and McGovern claimed to stand "1,000 percent" behind his VP pick. But pressure mounted from senior Democrats for Eagleton to withdraw. McGovern went so far as to speak to Eagleton's doctors and determined Eagleton was too risky. Eagleton withdrew eighteen days after his vice presidential nomination.
(Image by Lionel Martinez)
A New Honesty
In my home state of South Carolina, another candidate in the 1970s, perhaps learning a lesson from the Eagleton saga, chose to get ahead of any potential stories and disclose his mental health history. In September 1977, State Sen. Tom Turnipseed (D-SC), a former George Wallace staffer who later became something of a progressive public crusader-type trial lawyer, publicly discussed his treatment for depression, which, like Eagleton, also included electroconvulsive therapy. This disclosure was a trial balloon before Turnipseed announced his candidacy for governor a month later (Turnipseed dropped out of the race before the primary due to physical health problems).
In 1980, when Turnipseed ran for Congress against Rep. Floyd Spence (R-SC), Spence's pollster, the infamous Lee Atwater, used Turnipseed's electroconvulsive therapy treatment as a weapon against him. John Brady wrote about the back-and-forth between Atwater and the Turnipseed campaign in his excellent Atwater biography Bad Boy:
At one of his press conferences, he accused Atwater of using the telephone "push poll" technique to falsely inform voters that Turnipseed belonged to the NAACP.
Atwater erupted. "I’m not going to respond to that guy," he said. "What do you expect from someone who was hooked up to jumper cables?"
Similarly, in 1990, after entering the Florida governor's race, Lawton Chiles (D-FL) was forced to admit he had been treated for depression and prescribed Prozac. Unnamed "Republican officials" had tipped off the Palm Beach Post about Chiles' mental health. In retrospect, the Associated Press report from the time is almost comically breathless in its framing, considering how common Prozac is today. Chiles went on to serve two terms as governor.
But What Are The Limits?
Social acceptance of people dealing with mental health challenges has grown immensely in recent years as a whole new generation of combat veterans have openly discussed their mental health challenges for years, and the broader population admitted to similar struggles during the COVID pandemic.
Voters have elected members of Congress who have discussed their challenges with mental health as well. In February 2023, Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) disclosed that he was to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Washington for in-patient treatment for severe depression. Fetterman further disclosed that he experienced depression on and off throughout his life. Four members of Congress, including Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), came forward to express support for Fetterman and also to disclose their mental health challenges in an interview with ABC's Brittany Shepherd. Torres described coming forward as "a form of public service":
"Telling our stories is a form of public service. We represent people who are deeply affected by mental health conditions like depression, anxiety, who want to see themselves and their elected officials," he said. "And I felt like I had a profound obligation to confront the culture of silence and stigma and shame that often surrounds the subject of mental health."
But would voters feel the same openness about a president or vice president? Since Tom Eagleton's brief stint as a vice presidential candidate, voters haven't confronted that question.
The stakes, of course, are much higher when electing a head of government and their backup. We are no longer in a cold war and under constant threat of nuclear war, but the challenges facing any president or vice president are even more difficult today.
With the two oldest presidential major party nominees in history and a 70-year-old independent candidate, the conversation around mental health this election cycle has focused more on mental acuity than depression or other mental health challenges.
The New York Times' Susanne Craig report on Robert Kennedy Jr.'s brainworm revealed broader issues:
"I have cognitive problems, clearly," he said in the 2012 deposition. "I have short-term memory loss, and I have longer-term memory loss that affects me."
Craig's story relies heavily on a 2012 deposition from RFK Jr's divorce. Divorce records in New York, where RFK Jr's divorce occurred, are sealed. The divorce records were not something opposition researchers or reporters could have easily gotten their hands on. But it's also not the first time RFK Jr's divorce records have been made public. In 2012, Newsweek reported on the affidavit RFK Jr. filed in his divorce.
While voters debate about the mental acuity of this cycle's choices in presidential candidates, it is unclear how extensive of a history of depression voters would tolerate and how vicious attacks from the candidates' opponents on this issue might be.