The Wall Street Journal opines on candidates and their disclosure of their health:

By being open about his cancer, Fred Thompson seems to be keeping up his end of a tentative deal with voters that says: If you tell us what’s going on, we won’t automatically assume you’re not fit for office. But the emerging bargain is still a fragile one. Anything less than candor from a candidate, and it may be broken beyond repair.

I would go one step further – the candor from our current crop of candidates would make any contender who didn’t disclose potential health problems unforgivable. The actions of JFK and Paul Tsongas look dishonest and disrespectful of the American people in retrospect. (And the whole storyline on the West Wing a few years ago seems odd, where a major question was whether the American people would accept a president with MS. It’s not the health issue that’s problematic, it’s the cover up…)

It is rather striking that Republican candidates John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, and Thompson have all confronted cancer, and that Elizabeth Edwards is fighting it now.