Legitimate or not, bringing that up is not going to help our candidate.

...and whether or not it helps one candidate or another, IMHO, takes a back seat to the basic question: Is the person physically fit for what could be the most important job in the world?

If we can talk about supercilious matters all day long, how is it possible to argue that truly legitimate issues should be taboo? (No matter how distasteful they may be.)

(And, I won't even bring up one percent of the stuff that's hit the front pages and which has been used as political cannon fodder in the past decade to make my point, either.)

...racism...sexism...ageism...or any other "ism."

I'm talkin' oranges. You're talkin' apples.

(BTW, I just turned 50.)

...than so many other topics in our society?

Critics of our healthcare system, mental health advocates, and perhaps even yours truly would tend to agree that it is.

How ironic is this?

Some of us advocate--right here on these pages even--for treatment of PTSD among our returning veterans. But, when it comes to broaching the topic as far as our country's leaders are concerned, we fall back in "the perception" strategy?"

Yes, politics IS perception. I realize this more than most, too.

But, PTSD is an illness. And, it's treatable.

The more I've thought about this over the past hour, personally, the more I realize how fascinating and complex this Pandora's Box of an issue appears.

I'm 63 myself, but I think that going after McCain as a doddering old fool is a winner. Jeannie Moost had an hilarious bit on CNN last night showing McCain's fumbling attempts to read his speeches from a teleprompter. He's clearly unable to remember a speech well enough to be able to use the teleprompter as just a prompter. He's actually trying to read the speech from it, and he just can't. It's painful (even if hilarious) to watch. There's old and there's old, folks - some 90 year olds are sharp and some 50 year olds are over the hill. John McCain is an old man and every year of it shows. I don't think we should give him the excuse of PTSD. It would just give him the opportunity to replay his prisoner of war story, and, frankly, it would seem unfair somehow, given his history. But I think most people would find the symptoms of early senile dementia to be a disqualification for the presidency. I did see a recent poll (I can't find a link to it) that indicated that more people would have trouble voting for someone they perceive as old than would have trouble voting for either a black or a woman.