Jeff Jacoby: A President with Migraines? Ask Thomas Jefferson

Jeff Jacoby is a Globe columnist and can be reached at jacoby@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @Jeff_Jacoby.

When the Daily Caller, a news site based in Washington, D.C., reported last week that Michele Bachmann gets migraine headaches, it labored to give the impression that it was breaking an important story.

“Stress-related condition ‘incapacitates’ Bachmann; heavy pill use alleged,’’ the foreboding headline read. (Cue the grim background music.) The article, by Jonathan Strong, depicted a woman who crumples in the face of stress, reacting to the normal aggravations of political life - a staffer’s resignation, a missed flight - with “medical episodes’’ that leave her “incapacitated’’ for days at a time. To cope, she “takes all sorts of pills. Prevention pills. Pills during the migraine. Pills wherever she goes.’’ These “debilitating’’ migraines “occur once a week on average,’’ and at least three times have landed Bachmann in the hospital. Her staff must “constantly’’ consult with doctors to “tweak’’ their boss’s medication.

Bottom line? “Some close to Bachmann fear she won’t be equal to the stress of the campaign.’’ And some former aides “are terrified’’ by the thought of a migraine-prone President Bachmann.

All very melodramatic. But a few things were missing from Strong’s account. Like the nature of all those “pills’’ that Bachmann supposedly takes - addictive narcotics, or something more innocuous? And the identity of any of the unnamed “former aides’’ whose allegations the story recycles - which candidates, if any, are they working for now? Missing too was any evidence that a migraine condition is incompatible with the pressures of the presidency or any other high-powered position.

That’s because no such evidence exists.

The health of presidential candidates is of course a legitimate news topic. That’s especially true since, to quote the historian Robert Dallek, “concealing one’s true medical condition from the voting public is a time-honored tradition of the American presidency.’’..