John Kerry's Medical Records

Recently much hay has been made about John Kerry finally releasing his college grades and of him giving the Boston Globe access to his military records. I thought Kerry not releasing those records seemed to indicate a desire to hide his past and I thought the fact that the press did not pressure him to release those records showed a complicity to keep the truth from the American people. I also think the school grades and military form 180 are small potatoes compared to Kerry's medical records - which he never released.

John Kerry got into and graduated from Yale. That's enough for most people and certainly enough for me. If you went to a lesser known school like Whittier then maybe you would expect the person to excel but even then - it doesn't really matter. Quick - what college did Harry Truman go to? What were his grades? Did he even go to college? See what I mean? John Kerry's grades at Yale were a curiosity and nothing more.

In terms of Kerry's military record - well I think former shipmates on the USS Gridley describing him as "just another goofy ensign" and the passion of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth gave people as much or more information about Kerry as his full records ever would. Kerry's detractors wanted the full records to show that Kerry's medals were a sham but this living in the past seems counter-productive and I think the fact that the American people chose military service avoiding Bill Clinton over military hero Bob Dole showed that people are more interested in the future than the past (and rightly so).

The health records are a different story completely.

John Kerry is a cancer survivor. He owed it to the American people to go the extra mile to prove that the person they are electing is healthy enough to handle the job. The last US Senator to run for President from Massachusetts was Paul Tsongas who ran for President in 1992 claiming to have beaten his cancer but was dead by January 1997 at the age of 55.

John Kerry was 61, a cancer survivor and running for President. Yet the press made no real attempt to make his refusal to release his medical records a campaign issue. Duplicitous is the word that comes to mind.

Dick Cheney was not running for President but because of his past heart issues - Cheney's medical records were a major issue. Double standard? You bet.

The funny thing is that now that Kerry lost - the public no longer deserves to see his medical records. Even ex-Presidential candidates deserve privacy when it comes to their medical records. The story to me is not Kerry's medical records but how the press blatantly took sides in the last election and failed to make Kerry's refusal to release those records a story of the magnitude it deserved to be.