Ron Reagan: Dad had signs of Alzheimer's while still president (as early as '84) [View All]

[WI_DEM]

Ron Reagan claims in his new book, My Father at 100, that former President Ronald Reagan had signs of Alzheimer's disease during the 1984 presidential campaign, Washington Whispers reports.

"Watching the first of his two debates with 1984 Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale, I began to experience the nausea of a bad dream coming true. At 73, Ronald Reagan would be the oldest president ever reelected. Some voters were beginning to imagine grandpa -- who can never find his reading glasses -- in charge of a bristling nuclear arsenal, and it was making them nervous. Worse, my father now seemed to be giving them legitimate reason for concern. My heart sank as he floundered his way through his responses, fumbling with his notes, uncharacteristically lost for words. He looked tired and bewildered."

"My father might himself have suspected that all was not as it should be. As far back as August 1986 he had been alarmed to discover, while flying over the familiar canyons north of Los Angeles, that he could no longer summon their names."

The younger Reagan also reports, for the first time, that his father underwent brain surgery after falling off a horse six months out of the White House and that doctors "emerged from the operating room with the news that they had detected what they took to be probable signs of Alzheimer's disease."

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2011/01/14/reagan_had_signs_of_alzheimers_while_president.html#