The subject of presidential acuity is once again dominating the headlines. The release of “Original Sin” by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios reporter Alex Thompson, detailing what was known, or all-too-obvious, about Joe Biden’s cognitive decline in office, has rebukes flying like so many Russian drones.

The issue is fraught with concerns about the provenance of presidential decision-making on the full range of public policy, from issues of war and peace, to the granting of pardons, to the omission, for months at a time, of routine Cabinet meetings on budgetary and other topics. The controversy is not the first to affect the office of the presidency, but it is by far the most intense, owing to its crisis point, President Biden’s abject collapse in his CNN debate with Donald Trump on June 27, 2024.

Longtime observers of the White House easily recall how a wave of concern about Ronald Reagan’s acuity followed his own awful performance in his first debate with Walter Mondale on October 7, 1984. Conservative commentator Fred Barnes, who was a member of the Reagan-Mondale debate panel, wrote nearly a quarter century later in The Wall Street Journal opinion pages that “[Reagan] had a terrible night, often groping for details. He seemed hesitant and unsure, and gave a barely credible answer to my question about why he didn’t go to church (he cited security concerns). Afterwards, when we shook hands, Reagan looked stricken.”

Fortunately for Reagan, this debate was barely a month before the election and it was followed by a second encounter between the candidates in which Reagan disarmed his critics with one of his classic jests, answering a question about his age, saying, "I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience."

It was not the only time in his second term that Reagan deployed humor not just to ease tensions regarding his health and level of engagement, but to remind Americans that he was at ease in office and capable of handling its demands. In another article published after Reagan left office, physician Lawrence Altman offered a detailed assessment of Reagan’s medical condition in light of a new diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease he revealed in November 1994. Altman’s conclusion, after interviews with four of Reagan’s doctors and other sources, was emphatically that while Reagan worried about memory lapses in those years, his competence was more than adequate to the job. Altman reports that one day, Reagan walked into the White House medical office and greeted the attending physician, Dr. Lawrence Mohr, with a quip: “I have three things that I want to tell you today. The first is that I seem to be having a little problem with my memory. I cannot remember the other two.”

For President Biden, of course, the initial debate with Donald Trump was a far more starkly debilitated performance. There was to be no second opportunity, and there is no reason, in light of the revelations in Tapper’s book and prior reporting at the time, to think a second round of debate would have gone better. Questions, of course, exist not only about Biden’s withdrawal from the race last year but, even more importantly, to what extent he was engaged at all in many key decisions of his presidency and, to the extent he wasn’t, how those decisions were framed or carried out by others.

Dr. Mohr summarized well for The New York Times why, despite memory concerns, he regarded Reagan as fully capable of completing his presidency. “There was never anything that would raise a question about his ability to function as President. Ronald Reagan’s cognitive function, belief structure, judgment, ability to choose between options, behavior and ability to communicate were totally and completely intact.” Anyone who observed or interacted with him regularly during this time period would agree, while acknowledging what was obvious from time to time in his demeanor during the difficulties of his second term, most notably the Iran-Contra affair, the Challenger explosion in January 1986, and events at Chernobyl. A lame-duck presidency, even with the resounding 49 states Reagan won in 1984, did not carry the same lift as his change-making first term.

Having worked for Reagan during those years and seen his engagement in various ways, I cite two examples, out of many, to show not only his fitness for the job but his commitment to principled priorities. The speech at the Brandenburg Gate in June 1987 conveys his vigor of mind and purpose with perfect clarity. The decision to proceed with the call on Gorbachev to “Tear Down this Wall” was the action of a bold leader who had staked his foreign policy, as so much else, on a moral understanding of the nature of communism and the path to peace. Reagan elaborated on this understanding in another speech that deserves to be reread now, as the United States again seeks to elicit an agreement from Russia to embrace an end to its campaigns of conquest and control. That speech took place at Moscow State University on May 31, 1988. Here is an excerpt, though the hour-long address, a prelude to the ending of the Cold War, is well worth watching in full.

Speech texts are, of course, prewritten, and Reagan’s speechwriting shop was peerless. A separate proof of Reagan’s ability and acumen in his final days in office was his performance at his last formal press conference in the White House on December 8, 1988. Agree or disagree with his policies, there is no believing he had lost a step in this media interaction during his last full month in office. There are no notecards on the podium and, strikingly, nearly every issue he addressed remains topical in our perennially churning political world.

On a very rare occasion when I was in the president’s presence, my White House boss, his Special Assistant and Director of Correspondence, Anne V. Higgins, and I carried to him a document he was to review en route to New York City for the Knights of Malta Dinner. It was just a week before the inauguration of George H.W. Bush. Reagan was waiting to board Marine One and stood talking to his personal physician as we approached. Assuming it was some private conversation, Anne and I held back a way. Anne stepped forward to him at last and then waved me along. It turned out the discussion at hand between Reagan and his personal physician was neither some weighty matter of state nor his health, but who had won the national college football championship some 60 years earlier. Now that I am 72, I have no recollection of who that was, but Reagan did on that mid-January night in the White House basement.

Which brings us back to the core issues of 2023 and 2024 and even earlier. Without question, it is a deep responsibility of the press to challenge and question the fitness of office-holders and to examine how decisions are made. The physical and mental fitness of Ronald Reagan was a valid subject of concern, even if, as is the wont of the major media, critics tend to focus on these issues when it is a political leader they disagree with. For years, pundits referred to RR as an “amiable dunce.” They were half-right, as he was surely amiable. But no world leader, from Mikhail Gorbachev, to John Paul II, to Helmut Kohl and Margaret Thatcher, doubted his focus and grounding. As the story of Joe Biden’s last years in office is finally told, it’s vital that aides, reporters, historians, and others share what they know and when they knew it, particularly if there is any question whether decisions taken were actually his.

As for partisanship in the media, sad as it is, it is unlikely to fade away (just consider how media outlets are often financed), but all of us can resolve to make a better effort at objectivity in the quest for truth and trust. We owe it to both the past and the future.