In a column for Politico, longtime political observer Jeff Greenfield explained that images and video of Donald Trump struggling to raise a glass of water to his mouth and slowly and carefully walking down a ramp at West Point this past weekend likely did major damage to his 2020 re-election hopes.
Over the weekend speculation was rampant on social media about the state of the president's health -- driven in part by the Never Trumpers at the Lincoln Project -- and tone and discussion about the topic has added a new hurdle for a campaign that already is struggling with collapsing poll numbers over the president's other missteps on the economy and the response to the coronavirus pandemic.
As Greenfield notes, past history, where sitting presidents displayed growing physical infirmities, shows that doubts about the candidates' health weigh heavily on voters' minds and are a challenge for campaigns to make go away.
"Whatever the label, when the videos appeared on Saturday of President Trump shuffling down that ramp at West Point, a general walking attentively by his side, and using two hands to guide a water glass to his lips, the response on liberal Twitter threatened to deplete America’s Strategic Schadenfreude Reserve," Greenfield observed. "The images led to some elaborate online speculations and diagnoses, and for Trump, the attention clearly struck a nerve. Why else would the president take to Twitter to offer the excuse that the ramp was 'very slippery' (a claim that a New York Times story labeled highly dubious)?"
According to the columnist, Trump has good reason to worry about how the public perceives his possible declining health.
"It may sound trivial, and it’s often unfair, but when a modern president, or even a candidate, exhibits physical weakness, it comes with a political cost," the columnist wrote before recalling the damaging images of former President Gerald Ford almost constant stumbling, Jimmy Carter's collapse at the end of a six-mile race in 1979, and President George H.W. Bush vomiting in the middle of a state dinner in Japan.
"Without overstating the impact of these moments, it’s interesting to note that in each instance, the president lost his next election," Greenfield wrote. "Is this simply a demonstration of how the image has replaced reality in modern days? The preoccupation with physical vigor certainly isn’t new; in flogging his strength and stamina, Trump is drawing on a public fixation that has been part of our politics since, literally, the beginning."
"Yes, it may seem absurd to argue that in a time of pandemic, economic catastrophe, demands for racial justice, and a president often at war with the norms of a Constitutional republic, that a couple of video images should really preoccupy either the president or his critics," he explained before concluding, "But Donald Trump has a native instinct for knowing what matters—not what the pundits say, or what civics classes tell you, but what really sticks with people. And history says he’s right to be concerned about this one."
You can read more here.
