Knee-Deep in Presidential Ailment Coverage By Richard Craig March 14, 1997

President Clinton will be laid up for a while after tearing up his knee in a tumble down the stairs early Friday morning. Still, he should thank his lucky stars for one thing. Against all odds, there were no cameras there to record it.

If there had been, it might have become the defining image of his presidency, regardless of what happens in the next three years. Just ask Gerald Ford.

During Ford's presidency, it seemed like every time he tripped over something, there was a camera present to help reinforce his image as a bumbler. And even though Ford was a good 10 years older than Clinton when in office, Ford never seriously injured himself in a fall. Indeed, Ford's foibles were reported more as evidence of clumsiness than anything else.

Health questions are a larger matter, and a much more fascinating one for the press in recent years. Like everything else, presidential health has become more and more closely scrutinized by the press in the last two decades. For example, the New York Times not only ran the story of Clinton's injury at the top of page one, but also a sidebar story on his condition and the surgery he was to undergo, and a graphic showing the affected area and diagramming the surgical procedure. The CNN Interactive Web site is running a story with an animated illustration of how the knee joint moves, as well as a "Knee Notebook" to be updated day by day during the president's recovery.

This may seem like overkill, mainly because it is. Keep in mind that within the lifetime of many Americans, we had a president who couldn't walk, but the press rarely wrote about it. For a lot of us, this is nearly impossible to believe, but there was a time when reporters respected the privacy -- the dignity -- of the man occupying the White House.

In the last months of his presidency, Woodrow Wilson was largely incapacitated, yet this was kept quiet. In addition to his affliction with polio, Franklin Roosevelt suffered from many related ailments and was a very sick man through most of his last two terms, but the press still portrayed him as vigorous and vibrant. When John Kennedy was in office, the severity of his back problems was never revealed by the Washington press corps.

Perhaps it was Lyndon Johnson showing reporters the scar from his gallbladder surgery that began the press' distasteful obsession with the minutiae of presidential body parts. Whatever the cause, the notion of respect for the president's privacy has gone the way of all good things, and presidential health has become a perpetual cause célèbre.

In the 1980s, when President Reagan had surgery for colon cancer, there were not only daily reports on his progress, but detailed graphics in newspapers and on television, diagramming the trouble spot. Never mind that most of us want to leave the room when elderly parents and grandparents start comparing notes about stuff like this. Every news organization felt compelled to provide detailed descriptions of the president's large intestine. One might expect such things from Howard Stern, but from the Washington press corps?

In the 1990s we reached perhaps the zenith of absurdity when we were subjected to repeated slow-motion replays of George Bush throwing up all over the Japanese prime minister. In a way, this was typical of the Bush presidency -- reporters fearful of the phrase "President Quayle" analyzed everything from Bush's upset stomach to his thyroid problems to his irregular heartbeat to a fare-thee-well.

While Clinton's knee injury is less disgusting than some of the previous presidential ailments, it is nonetheless going to continue to be big news as he rehabilitates it. Early estimates are that the president won't be able to jog or play golf for anywhere from four to six months. With his well-documented history of weight problems and the current climate of the press, this could result in a "Clinton Weight Watch" in newspapers nationwide. Meanwhile, the jokes have already started; most widely circulated is that Clinton went to Florida to play golf and ended up with a handicap.

Before laughing too hard, Republicans should consider that this incident could offer several inadvertent benefits to the Clinton administration. For the moment at least, it has taken the focus off the fund-raising scandal that threatens Clinton's second-term legislative agenda. It has cast the president in a sympathetic light at a time when he needs such an image. It is a chance for him to look strong and unwavering by pushing ahead with the upcoming summit with Boris Yeltsin in spite of his injury. It also offers an opportunity to delegate a few more tasks to Al Gore, giving him a bit more high-profile experience in anticipation of a presidential run in 2000.

So while Republican House members are making noises about starting up impeachment proceedings against Clinton, the press is busy looking at x-rays. Their next burning question: Will Chevy Chase reappear on Saturday Night Live as Clinton and fall down a flight of stairs? Stay tuned.

©1997 Richard Craig. All rights reserved.

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