He's old but is he crazy?

By Ron Beasley

John McCain will be older than Ronald Reagan when he takes office.  We now know that the country was being run by Nancy Reagan (unofficially the first female President) and James Baker the III during Ronnie's second term because he was no longer up to the task.  It would only make sense that the American public has the right to know about not only McCain's physical health but his mental health as well.    In McCain's case his mental state is open to even more questions because of his five years as a POW in Vietnam.  Now we have already heard about his temper and since he sounds a lot like Dick Cheney I'm already inclined to think he's crazy.  But what do his medical records show?  Apparently we will never know.

What's in John McCain's Medical Records?

He'll be releasing everything about his repeated cancer surgeries. But he won't release his psychiatric records which hold clues to the effect of his Vietnam captivity.

On Friday, after repeated pledges to do so going back more than a year, the McCain campaign is set to release new information about the Arizona Republican's health history. The release, according to the campaign, will cover the year 2000 forward, a period when McCain had three of his four skin cancers removed, as well as lymph nodes and part of a salivary gland. It will not, however, include McCain's psychiatric records, which McCain allowed a select group of reporters to examine in 1999 but have never been released to the public. The new information is unlikely to quash recurring questions about McCain's age, his bouts with cancer, or how his experience in Vietnam may have affected his mind.

So what do we know?

In 1999, McCain responded to the questions about his mental health by allowing selected reporters to peruse 1,500 pages of his health records dating back to his release from Hanoi in 1973. Reporters were not permitted to photocopy any of the documents. The reporters who looked at the records did not describe any mention of a PTSD diagnosis. However, they failed to note that it would have been impossible for McCain to receive such a diagnosis -- since the term "post-traumatic stress disorder" was not in use until seven years after McCain's release from captivity. The term first appeared in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1980.

There are behaviors associated with the candidate that would be consistent with a diagnosis of PTSD. Author Robert Timberg mentions McCain's intense explosions of anger --- a hallmark sign of lingering mental trauma from war -- in his book "John McCain: An American Odyssey." Timberg describes the episodes as "an eruption of temper out of all proportion to the provocation." Timberg, who McCain has said "knows more about me than I do," wrote that McCain's sudden fury is a result of Vietnam coming "back to haunt him." McCain has himself described having an adverse reaction to the sound of jangling keys, which reminds him of his Vietnam jailers. McCain also told doctors that during solitary confinement he had strayed pretty "far out" and had referred to himself as "mentally deteriorating."

But there are some positive comments as well.

At the time, the campaign also released a statement by Dr. Michael M. Ambrose and Dr. Jeffrey L. Moore of the Robert E. Mitchell Center for Prisoner of War Studies, where McCain underwent a series of psychological tests and examinations between 1973 and 1993. "Senator McCain," the doctors wrote, "has never been diagnosed with or treated at the center for a psychological or psychiatric disorder. He has been subject to an extensive battery of psychological tests and following his last examination in 1993, we judged him to be in good physical and mental health." In a phone interview with the Associated Press, Ambrose said, "He had a very healthy way of dealing with his experiences."

But this should sound familiar - he's more like George W. Bush than we thought.

Enduring captivity also gave McCain another apparent psychological gift: a feeling of credibility. It finally allowed him to escape the shadow of his father, Jack, a four-star admiral who commanded the entire Pacific theater during Vietnam. "Although proud of his father, he has been preoccupied with escaping being in the shadow of his father and establishing his own image and identity in the eyes of others," O'Connell wrote on McCain's return from Vietnam. "He feels his experiences and performance as a POW have finally permitted this to happen." A 1979 doctor's note in McCain's records described this dynamic as "Oedipal rivalry."

Now seven and a half years of lunatic rule has just about destroyed this nation.  It won't survive four more.

Update

The New York Times has more