[RonDog]

One thing I never knew:
Why was the late William Loeb attacking Jane Muskie in the first place?
Why exactly did he say about her? The news coverage never really said, as I recall.

From the Google cache of http://bioethics.net/in_focus/in_focus_cook-hoas.php:

Irreconcilable Differences? Seeking Boundaries for Privacy and Technology

By Ann Freeman Cook, Ph.D, The University of Montana

Helena Hoas, Ph.D., The University of Montana
e-mail: hoas@selway.umt.edu

In an essay on post-modernism, Walter Truett Anderson suggests that in a pluralistic society such as ours, "there are lots of differences and there are also different sorts of differences." (Anderson, 1995) These differences are rooted in competing world views. As the differences become more discernable, truth becomes more elusive; indeed truth becomes an artifact or construction of a particular world view. One could borrow that kernel of Anderson's argument, add the lure of information technology, and privacy could certainly be regarded as an equally elusive quarry. Even levels of privacy that historically have been regarded as sacred, such as the physician/patient confidentiality celebrated in the Hippocratic Oath, are increasingly under siege. 

This siege is not new, but it has certainly intensified since 1972, when William Loeb published articles in the Manchester Union Leader that vigorously questioned the mental health of Jane Muskie. Muskie, the wife of a presidential contender, had received mental health treatment. Those articles, and the public response to them, demonstrated how easily disclosure may result in personal disaster. Thus it is no surprise that by 1979, the need to find a balance between protecting the confidentiality of personal information and providing access to individual data for research and statistical purposes became intensified... (Flaherty, 1979)

[Theodore R.]

Now it makes sense. A few months after Jane Muskie's mental health was questioned in NH, Senator George Stanley McGovern dropped Thomas F. Eagleton as his V.P. choice and substituted with R. Sargent Shriver, a Kennedy in-law and IL native. Eagleton, it was found, had undergone treatment for an undisclosed mental illness earlier. I wonder if treatment for mental illness would still be a taboo in American politics, considering how AR Bill and his liberal supporters so lowered the bar on consideration of candidacy. In fact, today, it might help a candidate who has been "treated" for mental illness. He can say that he is certified now to be of "sound mind and body."