Limping to the Finish Line
This morning, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin held his longest press conference of his three year tenure in the job. The position of Secretary of Defense is always an important cabinet position, usually the second or third most important among the cabinet. In fact, the official presidential line of succession flows from the Veep to the Speaker of the House, to the President Pro Tempore of the Senate (strangely enough, a person few of us recognize in Patty Murray – D-WA) and then to the fifteen cabinet members starting with the Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of Defense, Attorney General and so on until finally the Secretary of Homeland Security. That makes Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin arguably the sixth most important officer of the government of the United States. A side note that surprised me is that with Harris, Murray and Yellin occupying three of those first six slots, we seem close to gender neutrality in our governance at the moment.
During his press conference, Sec. Austin fielded two types of questions, those that pertained to the various conflict hotspots around the world that occupy all of our collective mindshare like Ukraine, Gaza, Iran and its proxies like Hamas, Houthi’s and Hezbollah, and Taiwan, and those about his personal health. The health questions were only 20% about his health as it pertains to his ongoing capacity, with the other 80% about how he had handled his recent incapacitation and hospital stay for prostate cancer and then the negative impact on his health from a related infection that affected his abdomen, hip and leg. This was a two-week medical trauma that was made all the more serious from a national defense perspective since the attempts by him and/or his staff to keep it all private (even from the White House) is said to possibly be a violation of constitutional law. We all know the importance of transparency in presidential health since he has the “nuclear codes”, but we probably don’t think often that similar rules apply to cabinet secretaries, given their important role in the administrative state. I doubt people would be so worried about the Secretary of Education, but Secretary of Defense seems to be a command and control position that seems critical enough to be under close scrutiny and awareness. Sec. Austin did all the necessary mea culpas for his oversight and the rest will be played out in the congressional investigation that is ongoing.
But as for Secretary Austin’s future health status, it was noticed by the press pool that he arrived at the press conference at the Pentagon in a golf cart, from which he very gingerly limped across the stage to the podium. The man is 6’4” and supposedly weighs 250 pounds, 28 pounds more than what the insurance charts suggest he should weigh. He graduated from West Point in 1975 (the same year I graduated from Cornell) and he is about 6 months older than me. I have shrunk to 6’4” from 6’5” and my goal weight in a perfect world would be to get down to 270 pounds. All that means that I can relate to him wanting to take a golf cart around the Pentagon, since it is a 34 acre building (the largest in the world for 80 years) with 18 miles of corridors. The JFK Delta terminal is nowhere near that big and I know how much I hate having to traverse that expanse. When asked about the golf cart, in a tone that implied he was disabled for having to use it, he said that it was his first time using it and that he liked it quite a lot (Good for you, Lloyd!).
I am paying a lot more attention these days to people of my own age and Sec. Austin is as close to my age as anyone in a high-ranking position. So, it is curious to me to think about his motivations and health, especially as to the issue of his capacity to be in such a high-powered and demanding position. Needless to say, that is a hot topic in general these days with what looks like what may become of the Biden v. Trump matchup (technically a rematch) in November. As we all know, Biden will be 82 on Election Day and Trump will be 78. I somehow feel like that issue is not worth further discussing since, among other considerations, I somehow think they will have so much help in keeping up with the necessary pace. But the cabinet secretaries seem like they have to be more workhorses than that, doing the administration’s bidding to carry the water for their particular area of focus. Lloyd Austin may be able to command a golf cart to get around the Pentagon, but clearly the press corps will accuse him of being feeble if he takes advantage of that. Think about FDR or Governor Greg Abbott in a wheelchair. People may think that’s a weakness, but few would dare say it. I recall that when RBG was alive and serving on the Supreme Court, which she did as allowed until the day she died at 87, her minimal gym workout regime was a newsworthy topic.
We all understand that wisdom comes with age, but I think we also realize that on average that usable wisdom level peaks several years before our demise depending on a number of personal health factors. At this age, I am more aware of debilitating mental illnesses like dementia and Alzheimer’s. A lot of time gets dedicated to thinking about how to minimize the risk of getting caught in that whirlwind. Some do Wordle and crosswords, some do Seduko, and others do what I do, which is to write daily. Whatever we do, we also have to watch ads from non-prescription drugs like Prevagen, which claims to help people avoid the slippery slope of mental decline with age. If the amount of money being spent on ads is an indicator, this must be a growing concern to more and more people who may not want to seek professional medical help, but at least want to see what the pharmacy can offer them to fend off dementia.
For many millennia, the image of human development is of starting on all fours crawling, growing into two-legged vibrant adulthood and then progressing into three-legged agedness with a cane to help us along the road. People who used canes were neither unusual, nor necessarily considered mentally feeble nor less than competent. But now there seems to be a sense that if you are not physically able to stand erect for long periods and walk the corridors of the Pentagon, you may not be up to the task. Maybe in this day and age we all assume that everyone has access to arthroscopic joint replacement surgery that makes it irresponsible to not be able to physically ambulate without a cane or with so much as a limp. The truth according to Google is that 26% of those procedures do not eliminate pain in a meaningful way and that as much as 30% of the recipients of those procedures are not satisfied with the outcome. You will note that this is more about expectations than not, but the point remains that this is not science fiction that anyone with a leg or hip problem can be fixed with the snap of a finger.
I am working hard at the gym and with my exercise program to keep myself more rather than less mobile and flexible. I don’t need a cane or other prophylactic to stand or walk, but I also know I am always looking for something to lean on or sit on after a few minutes of standing or walking. I do not want to be a cabinet secretary with all its demands at my age, so my hat’s off to Lloyd Austin whether he limps to the podium or scoots off in his golf cart. I don’t need my Secretary of Defense to be highly mobile so long as his mind is working fluidly and his sense of human compassion is fully formed and flexible.