Presidential Physicals - More Junk food?

All these presidential physical exams are just more junk-food for the American electorate. They are released at carefully chosen times in the selection process and usually by their own family doctors. John McCain even went so far as to restrict access to his records to a few people who could not record any information they saw, and they could only see the documents which were presented, and that release was only for one three hour period, the day before a major summer holiday.

It’s not like we haven’t had problems with presidents that physical exams might have detected before the voters were asked to cast their ballots. That’s been a fairly common occurrence over the past several occupants of the White House.

This is not a problem unique to politics. Any one aspiring to military service is required to pass a standardized physical exam. So are our policemen and firefighters. Bus drivers and airplane pilots are other jobs requiring standardized physical exams before the aspirant can even qualify to apply for those positions.

Being president of the United Sates is arguably at least as important as being a policeman, firefighter, bus driver or airplane pilot. It seems amazing that our country doesn’t have proper requirements already in place and require all candidates to submit themselves to such examination by qualified and INDEPENDENT physicians.

Dare we go further and suggest mental and emotional examinations? Why not? The military requires comprehensive physical, mental and emotional examinations (and passing them!) for any officer whose job will be connected with the delivery of nuclear weapons. All that “delivery”, by the way, is totally dependent upon an order from the ONLY member of that chain of command who has not passed such examinations.

Obviously we can’t put this is place before this election, not now, but we could begin such a national interest safeguard and require that it be in place some time in the future. The year 2012 might be good, or even 2010 as a trial run. We could even grandfather those already in office, but we do need to begin the process. Finally, should this be extended to members of congress and Supreme Court Justices? Why not? I like the idea.