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are you the brain specialist?
Dec. 16th, 2006 09:22 amThe medical trials of Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD) seem to call for comment from us self-appointed Senate trivia experts. The comment they call for is that any speculation about his Senate seat is grossly precipitous, as he is said to be recovering.
However, since newspapers have been nattering about incapacitated senators holding on to their seats, I'll confirm that it's true, and that one of the worst examples was three occupants back on Johnson's very own seat. Karl E. Mundt (R-SD), best remembered as a crony of Joe McCarthy's, suffered a stroke (I think it was) in 1969 and did nothing, either in terms of occupying his seat or leaving it, until his term ran out at the end of 1972. Eventually even the Republicans grew disgusted and stripped him of his committee assignments.
Cases of committee chairmen keeping their jobs but no longer able to perform them date from a little more recently than that.
But things have changed a lot in recent decades, and I think the spotlight on a permanently incapacitated senator would be strong enough now that he'd be removed from assignments more speedily and be under strong pressure to resign. But Senate definitions of capacitated are not narrow: in recent decades we've had at least two senators permanently in wheelchairs, and at least two others with missing or inoperative limbs, all of whom were able to perform their jobs. I know of at least one blind senator, considerably further back in time; not sure about deaf ones, though hard-of-hearing is certainly known.
Senatorial vital statistics have improved, too. From WW2 (as far back as I've checked) up to the early 1970s, at least one or two senators died in office almost every year. But since 1980 only nine senators have died in office: one by suicide (John East, R-NC), two in plane crashes (John Heinz, R-PA, and Paul Wellstone, D-MN), the other six medically. The most recent death other than Wellstone's was that of Paul Coverdell (R-GA), who died in 2000 following emergency brain surgery.
However, since newspapers have been nattering about incapacitated senators holding on to their seats, I'll confirm that it's true, and that one of the worst examples was three occupants back on Johnson's very own seat. Karl E. Mundt (R-SD), best remembered as a crony of Joe McCarthy's, suffered a stroke (I think it was) in 1969 and did nothing, either in terms of occupying his seat or leaving it, until his term ran out at the end of 1972. Eventually even the Republicans grew disgusted and stripped him of his committee assignments.
Cases of committee chairmen keeping their jobs but no longer able to perform them date from a little more recently than that.
But things have changed a lot in recent decades, and I think the spotlight on a permanently incapacitated senator would be strong enough now that he'd be removed from assignments more speedily and be under strong pressure to resign. But Senate definitions of capacitated are not narrow: in recent decades we've had at least two senators permanently in wheelchairs, and at least two others with missing or inoperative limbs, all of whom were able to perform their jobs. I know of at least one blind senator, considerably further back in time; not sure about deaf ones, though hard-of-hearing is certainly known.
Senatorial vital statistics have improved, too. From WW2 (as far back as I've checked) up to the early 1970s, at least one or two senators died in office almost every year. But since 1980 only nine senators have died in office: one by suicide (John East, R-NC), two in plane crashes (John Heinz, R-PA, and Paul Wellstone, D-MN), the other six medically. The most recent death other than Wellstone's was that of Paul Coverdell (R-GA), who died in 2000 following emergency brain surgery.
