Just 2 short years ago we had elected our oldest president Donald Trump at the young age of 70 years old, which will put him at 74 when he goes for re-election. Now this is not an article or a show that will try to say Donald Trump is a crazy old guy but I do want this show to be about an honest discussion about age and our presidents. Just the other day Joe Biden declared that he was the most qualified person to be president which would make him 78 years old when he would take office. Lets also discuss how the other expected front runners in 2020 are Bernie Sanders who would be 79, Elizabeth Warren who would be 71, and Hillary Clinton who would be 73.
So think about this for a second, most of the major front runners would be well into their 70’s with some being in their 80’s when they got out of office. Now I am not bashing on older people and saying they can’t do the job, but what I am saying is that should we have serious looks at candidates and how their cognitive functioning is at this age? I used to work for a neuro-imaging clinic and we had to assess clients in this age group all the time for what was called pre-frontal lobe dementia.
What is Pre-frontal lobe dementia you ask, it is an early onset dementia that typically begins to show symptoms around the age of 65 and attacks the pre-frontal cortex or the thinking and emotional regulation part of our brain. Here is a summary of the major symptoms of this type of dementia
Personality Changes
Personality changes that can occur because of frontal lobe dementia include:
- Impulsiveness
- Apathy and indifference
- Socially inappropriate behavior
Cognitive Problems
Frontal lobe dementia does not cause memory loss, but it can other cognitive and neurological problems similar to those caused by Alzheimer’s disease or stroke. These symptoms can include:
- Difficulty with speech and language
- Inability to concentrate
- Inability to plan
- Using the wrong object for the wrong task, or at the wrong time
- Movement and balance difficulties
What is scary about this type of dementia is that many of the patients were brought in by their family, were having significant problems at work, were often leaders of companies, and did not think anything was wrong with them. Because the symptoms were gradual in onset and not overtly present, the companies often had no real way of saying that they were incapacitated and were often left in power to make bad decisions or being taken advantage of by people who knew what was going on.
A family business is one thing, imagine what this would look like if it was a president? President Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s when he left office and only then did stories come out about some problems he was having. Imagine if we had a president with pre-frontal lobe dementia which some people are arguing that President Trump has been demonstrating symptoms of. To help us discuss this issue, we are joined by our good friend Max Miller of The Voice of The Radical Center on Talk 1370 AM and also joined by our own Richard “The Professor” DeVine to be our resident elderly statesman.
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