Reagan’s Brain: Was Alzheimer’s a Cause or an Effect?

When Ronald Reagan revealed, in 1994, that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease — a finding many already suspected — I felt no compassion towards him whatsoever.

That’s not totally true. Actually, what I did was that I celebrated. It felt like cosmic retribution for his willful ignorance of the HIV/AIDS crisis, the classification of ketchup as a “vegetable” for low-income schoolchildren, and the thousand other casual cruelties that defined his time in office.

Now, I’m not sure how I feel. Don’t get me wrong; I still think he was a rotten president, even measured against the ones that have followed.

But recent insights into the workings of the brain, and the role emotions play in our physical health, have forced me to reconsider — very reluctantly — my antipathy towards the Gipper. While it’s generally thought that Alzheimer’s causes a characteristic emotional and cognitive disconnect, it seems increasingly plausible that the disease that clouded the last years of his life wasn’t the cause of his disconnection, but a symptom of it.

It’s an uncomfortable reckoning, but it’s one I can’t ignore. If I accept that Reagan was born into a family system so traumatic that it led him to deny his very emotions, can I deny him the compassion every child deserves?