Presidential candidates reveal all before anyone else can

When confronted with the prickly question of whether to disclose their illnesses, Presidents Calvin Coolidge, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy divined a simple strategy, historians say. They dissembled. They lied. They covered up or simply kept their mouths shut to keep Americans in the dark.

One can only imagine that those presidents would be rubbing their eyes in disbelief this week.

Not only at the sight of John Edwards, the North Carolina Democrat and presidential candidate, telling the nation in a news conference that his wife’s cancer had returned in an incurable form. But also at the slew of other presidential contenders who are dealing with illness in a decidedly 21st-century fashion...