Americans deserve every assurance that candidates seeking or holding a position within the executive branches of our government possess the necessary health to carry out the leadership demands expected of the most powerful positions in global politics. Prospective candidates, as well as sitting office-holders, must, going forward, be administered independent, comprehensive health exams that ensure both physical and mental fitness to serve in our highest offices.

We have in place the physical health aspect, yet mental fitness testing is absent or lacking. Such an exam — ideally standardized and facilitated by a nonpartisan team of peer-reviewed experts — would evaluate the capacity of our leaders to fulfill the demanding duties that ensure the safety of our fundamental ideologies of democracy as set up by our Constitution. We, the people, should expect executive-branch leaders to possess full faculty of mind and cognition, undiminished judgment and emotional fitness throughout their terms.

A comprehensive mental health exam would counter the current proliferation of “fake news” of popular press, social media, or by political opponents. It would determine when, and if, age is a comorbidity to mental fitness. We Americans so deserved this level of vetting during both prior and current administrations. We have in our past been served well by a president with polio, another incapacitated by chronic back problems, but we can never be served well by any president failing in the skillsets and complex parameters of a fully functioning and fit mental status.

It’s time we expand our criteria of health requirements in leadership.

Berry Manter
Portland