are you the brain specialist?

[calimac]

The 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.

Comments

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I have the video tape of Paul Wellstone's memorial service and have recent started to try to watch it. I've only made it a little way in before I have to turn it off. Maybe in small doses I'll be able to see the whole thing. We were abroad when he died, and I missed it in real time.

K. [D-MN]

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I've missed a few things that way too, and never quite felt closure on them. A beloved young symphony conductor around here died when I was living out of town, and as it wasn't big national news I didn't find out about it for a couple of years.

And I was in England during Katrina, mostly away from the news, so the first I heard about that was a BBC newscaster talking about rooftop-level water in NOLA. "What?" quoth I, though I could guess immediately what must have happened.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

You're forgetting Sen. Strom Thurmond, who was in the Senate until he turned 100. During the last few years of his long and checkered career he mostly just sat there while his aides did the work. And to keep some conspiracy theories going on Sen. Heinz's plane crash, I'll point out that fellow Iran-Contra investigating committee member former Sen. John Tower died in a plane crash the next day. And speaking of Wellstone dying a few days before a contested election he was likely to win, two years earlier Gov. Mel Carnahan died in a plane crash a few days before a contested election and won anyway beating Sen. John Ashcroft.

And I'll note in passing that Prescott Bush, W's grandfather, became Senator in a special election when CT Sen. McMahon died.

I would also observe that anyone who thinks Reagan had his full faculties during his second term is utterly unfit to comment on brain functions.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

We were abroad for Katrina, too. And when Jerry Garcia died....

K.

[lisa-marli.livejournal.com]

No, but I play one on TV.
Seriously, almost everyone who really is a specialist says that he ain't dying, he's probably going to be all right.
Which means of course that Fox News (that fair and balanced thing on the far right) has already declared him brain dead and are wondering how fast the Republican governor can replace him. Yes, the same news channel that brought us "But we Know Terri Shivo is alive!" now have brain experts (who again have not seen any real facts) declaring the Johnson is a Vegetable and Brain Dead and should be replaced Immediately! If not sooner.
I wish I was kidding, but I'm Not!
By the by - Johnson is now reaching out for his wife and responding to questions. Prognosis for reasonable recovery, very good.

[asimovberlioz.livejournal.com]

Calvin Simmons? For some reason, I don't know what, I was thinking about him earlier today.

[asimovberlioz.livejournal.com]

I just hope he is able to show up early in the next session of Congress, and when asked how he feels, say "got better!"

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

No - however Gumby-like Thurmond's and Reagan's mental problems, they weren't incapacitated like Mundt (or Glass, or McClellan) were. They showed up and the lights were on, no matter how many bricks were missing from the load. If you want to cite senators for being dim, whether caused by a physical illness or not, the list would be very long indeed. And there are other problems, like the senator who chaired the Foreign Relations Committee for FDR's first two terms while spending the whole eight years totally plastered. What he said to foreign diplomats took a lot of explaining away.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

But it was Tom Foley, not Tim Johnson, who got turned into a Newt.

[asimovberlioz.livejournal.com]

How Wright you are! You deserve a Tip.