Clearly Reagan was nuts at the end of his Presidency!

[trumad]

Do you folks remember shortly after Reagan left office he was allowed to sit in the announcing booth of a baseball game, (might have been a All-Star game) and Reagan spouted the most inane crap ever heard? It was embarrassing and very uncomfortable to listen to this guy try and communicate a sentence.

Well read this snip from todays Daily Howler:
CANNON (page 631): t was obvious to Regan and Wallison that the president was still shaky in his recollections. Wallison drew up what Abshire called an “aide-memoire” to help the president recall what he had told them. At the top Wallison wrote, “On the issue of the TOW shipment in August, in discussing this matter with me and David Abshire, you said you were surprised to learn that the Israelis had shipped the arms. If that is your recollection, and the question comes up at the Tower Board meeting, you might want to say that you were surprised.”

The question, of course, came up...After a preliminary question about presidents and their NSC staffs, Tower asked Reagan about the discrepancy between his statement and Reagan’s on the question of whether he had given prior approval to the Israeli arms shipment. Reagan rose from his chair, walked around the desk and said to Wallison, “Peter, where is that piece of paper you had that you gave me this morning?” Then he picked up the paper and began to read, “If the question comes up at the Tower Board meeting, you might want to say that you were surprised.”

Tower’s jaw went slack. It was, as Abshire put it, “a low moment.” Tower suspected that Reagan was being manipulated by his counsel, and the Tower Board’s chief of staff, Rhett Dawson, asked Wallison for a “copy of the script” when the board departed. But Wallison was even more amazed than the Tower Board by Reagan’s response. “I was horrified, just horrified,” Wallison recalled later.
http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh061004.shtml

Ron was clearly not all there at the end..,...

[shraby]

1. And why wasn't the public

made aware that our president was incapacitated???? It's our right to know and for congress to take appropriate steps.

[mom cat]

8. It was always clear to me that he was only the "acting president".

I remember a press conference shortly after he was elected. In response to one question he answered "They told me I wasn't supposed to talk about that". The right wing patrons don't care what kind of a fool they put in office... note the current resident.

[colonel odis]

10. same reason we're not made aware of it today. n/t

[scrotim]

2. I've long thought it clear that the Alzheimer's was kicking in long before

RR left office.

Actually, slow-onset Alzheimer's would explain weird Reagan gaffes clear back to the beginning of his presidency.

This is an obvious and likely possibility so, natch, it is never mentioned in the SCLM.

[FleshCartoon]

5. It does seem that this incident...

...is typical Alzheimer's behavior.

But I agree that if he was exhibiting this sort of dementia prior to leaving office, he should have been pushed to resign.

[GainesT1958]

3. Apparently...

Ronnie's mind had been going for much of his second term, and maybe even part of his first. I recall Leslie Stahl's shock at Ronnie wondering who they were when she and her husband were invited to the Oval Office in '86. It was only when Stahl's husband began to talk about Ronnie's movies with him that he began to act like he knew who they were.

Then there was the scene with Ronnie greeting guests from the National League of Cities' Conference, in, I think, '87. When he came to Sam Pierce, then HUD Secretary, Ronnie asked him, "And how are things in YOUR city, Mr. Mayor?"

Unfortunately, all this makes it much easier to understand how Iran-Contra could have happened, right under his nose!:eyes:

B-)

[htuttle]

4. He started to talk about aliens a lot by the end

IIRC, he talked about aliens to the UN General Assembly at one point.

[dr.strangelove]

6. Aliens aren't nuts

While Bonzo was wacko during his last two years in office, the aliens comment to the UN General Assembly were actually a timely response to pop culture. I remember during the mid-late 80s there was a thought that only an alien invasion could get the US and USSR to join forces, since their mutual aniliation was they only thing both would agree was a bad thing. Gorby thought this was stupid, but it got lots of discussion on Carson, Letterman and Donahue. Anyway, Reagan was a babbling idiot by the middle of the first year. Thats why I still believe he knew nothing about the contra weapons scandal. Bill Casey only told Reagan what he needed to know in order to make pretty speeches. He was the classic puppet President.
Thats why I don;t feel as mush hate for the man as some other on DU appear to harbor. I direct all my hatred of the Reagan years at the GOP. Reagan was a puppet who they controlled. He was a nice, though feeble minded, old man. He reminded me of my grandpa after his two strokes.

[SheilaT]

9. The idea that an alien invasion

could unite the world has been around in science fiction since at least the 60's, and probably since the 50's.

[EndElectoral]

7. If October Surprise was legit, he was nuts in the beginning!!!

[BurtWorm]

11. Nuts is the wrong word.

Vacant is more like it. He was in decline due to Alzheimers.

[Lindacooks]

12. Many physicians felt that he was showing signs

of Alzheimer's in the mid 1980s. A shrink friend of my says she noticed signs of the disease in 1982 - circular thinking, mostly - answering questions with circular 'logic' and bringing in irrelevant subjects.

[drscm]

13. Better than being an evil sociopathic narscissist from the beginning

like the current occupant of the white house.