Candidates in health war

Published 10:23 am Thursday, September 22, 2016

We, the American People, should pat ourselves on the back for having survived a multitude of presidential battles this year. So far we’ve ducked mud thrown during the Little Hands Wars, the Naked Wives Wars, the Bigotry Wars, the Qualification Wars, the Crazier than a Wombat in a Centrifuge Wars, and now a brand new phase: the Health Wars. Open those umbrellas folks, because the partisan splooey is starting to pour.

These new attacks concern which candidate is sick, sicker, sickest and question whether the opponent can summon the required stamina to act as president. Obviously it’s an integral consideration but not the only one, otherwise the fight for Chief Executive would be raging between Ashton Eaton, the Olympic Decathlon champion, and mixed martial artist Ronda Rousey. Which could be a double upgrade.

Listen to 70-year-old codger Donald Trump and you’d think that 68-year-old geezer Hillary Clinton is not just too sick to serve, but already dead and only ambulatory due to a dark sorcery achieved by making a deal with the devil himself. It’s a charge which the press is dutifully investigating, but has yet support or debunk.

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Hillary did spend three days off the campaign trail recovering from what she claims was a slight touch of walking pneumonia, but anonymous tweets suggest was really a severe case of projectile Ebola. The truth, undoubtedly, lies somewhere in between.

To herald his health, the New York developer handed the press a single paragraph from his gastroenterologist that said if elected, Trump would be the healthiest person ever to assume the presidency in the history of the United States. It read like a six-year old forging a note signed by “my parents.”

To great fanfare, Hillary returned to the campaign trail accompanied by James Brown’s “I Feel Good,” crowing that she was happy her pneumonia finally got Republicans interested in women’s health. And if indeed she augmented her rehabilitation with a humor implant, that could only help.

Then Trump went on Dr. Oz’s television show, handing him a completely different single sheet of paper claiming he was fitter than a pig in spit. The problem is Dr. Oz is a doctor the same way that Donald Trump is a statesman, with both reminding associates of the sound made by a duck. They are kindred businessmen that specialize in peddling bottles of oil milked from imaginary snakes.

In order to further validate his phantom diagnosis, the next step for the campaign is to receive televised house calls from either Dr. Kildare, Dr. Kimble, Dr. Lechter, Dr. Zhivago, Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, Dr. Howard, Dr. Frank-N-Furter, Dr. Strange, Dr. Strangelove, Hawkeye Pierce, Dr. No or Doc Savage.

Trump vows to release “an extremely beautiful, tremendously detailed report”… later. It’s always “later” with this guy. He’ll release his taxes, later. He’ll reveal his budget cuts, later. He’ll explain his plan to defeat ISIS, later. People should promise to vote for him… later.

But when two people aim to rule as septuagenarians, it is vital for their prospective subjects to know the accurate state of their health. For instance: what sort of twisting of the vocal cords makes Hillary’s voice etch lines into lead crystal and exactly what bizarre medical condition does Trump suffer from that causes him to be so orange?

 

Will Durst is an award-winning, nationally acclaimed columnist, syndicated by Cagle Cartoons Inc.