GOP Sen’s Health Reveal Proves Trump Can’t Hide Much Longer |
Maine Senator Susan Collins’ re-election chances appear to be on shaky ground—the 73-year-old is trailing her Democratic opponent Graham Platner in current polls by as much as nine points.
And the race, as well as broader conversations about gerontocracy in government, has brought to the forefront the fact that Collins has been shaking, literally, for decades. Her voice. Her hands. Her posture.
It has all become impossible to ignore.
So this week, Collins addressed her diagnosis—a benign essential tremor—with a local news outlet, noting that she has had the condition for years and asserting that it has no impact on her job. Still, the tremor wasn’t a secret she chose to reveal. It was dragged into the open by reporting on a viral campaign ad, the kind of commentary and exposure that made denial not just implausible, embarrassing and impossible.
Sure, politicians hide things all the time. Secrets in their personal lives and their finances, for starters. Paramount among those secrets are health issues.
Nothing scares a voter more than the thought that their representative—or their president—is on the way out. And nothing scares a politician more than to be perceived as weak or sick. Just ask Joe Biden.
The same day Collins was forced into her reluctant confession, a video of Donald Trump at a White House event surfaced showing both of his hands caked in makeup. It was mortifyingly thick, mismatched, a conspicuously sloppy paint job that didn’t come close to matching the skin........