Jon Ralston on why Gov. Gibbons would have best been served by openness

Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2007 | 7:03 a.m.

Two declarations before I discuss Gov. Jim Gibbons and his suddenly disclosed medical condition:

First, it has always pained me to ask any personal questions of public figures. Unlike too many in the Fourth Estate, I believe personal lives are off limits unless a direct and obvious nexus to public performance can be established. It is partly why I was so initially put off by L'Affaire Mazzeo, although that soon became - where have we heard this before? - more about the cover-up than the alleged crime.

Second, I have no reason to believe that the governor suffers from anything but so-called familial tremors, a relatively benign and mostly annoying affliction - and interviews of neurologists on "Face to Face" on Tuesday only cemented this belief.

That being said, Gibbons' handling of this issue unfortunately dovetails with his dissembling about the real reason for his midnight swearing-in ritual (to appoint his own man to the Gaming Control Board) and raises suspicions in this case where perhaps none should be raised. And it also illustrates how a metastasizing credibility cancer diagnosed by all manner of spin doctors last week could snowball if the governor continues to employ a policy of stonewalling and paranoia instead of openness and solicitousness. Or they could at least have the good sense to fake it.

This may not be like any number of presidents who concealed illnesses, some more serious than others. But it also is a different time, when the Internet appears to have pierced any remaining rights to privacy for politicians. Public figures, though, should still not have to simply release medical records because the media jackals are baring their fangs.

But, as UNLV communications professor Stephen Bates put it on the program, "There's no reason to be asking these sorts of questions unless there's some sort of probable cause. Probable cause has been raised now by the tremors and there is every reason then to ask for the medical records ... I think the governor has an obligation to reassure the public by getting a full neurological work-up, if he hasn't already done so, and releasing it and waiving confidentiality with a doctor."

Even if some might see that as going too far, surely the Gibbons folks have not gone far enough. Gibbons' press secretary, when asked when the governor was first diagnosed and how fast it is progressing, refused to even ask the governor the questions.

But why? Why is the public not entitled to have any fears alleviated by the production of records that clearly show it not a more debilitating illness and one that does not affect the governor's ability to do the job?

Both of the neurologists I interviewed suggested that Gibbons likely has nothing to hide. And Steve Wark, a veteran GOP political consultant who said he has known Gibbons for 15 years, disclosed Tuesday that he has known about the tremors for some time.

So why create a mystery when one is not necessary? It's becoming a familiar question for the new governor and his apparatchiks.

And those questions are separate from the puzzlement of why on earth his wife, who presumably knows of this condition and that it is exacerbated by caffeine, would give Gibbons an energy drink saturated with the stimulant before one of his two faux swearings-in? Does the Family Gibbons really not know that energy drinks have caffeine? Or, perhaps, Dawn Gibbons is a closet sadist, who enjoyed seeing her husband shaking all over during one of the most important moments of his public life?

Gibbons came into office with less than 50 percent of the vote and on the heels of a spiraling series of scandals - Mazzeo, an illegal nanny and a cruise arranged by a wealthy donor who secured government contracts. He didn't exactly have a deep reservoir of goodwill to draw from - and what he had is slowly draining.

Wark talked on the program about how forthrightness about foibles, even something as presumably minor as these tremors, is too often eschewed by politicians who want only to project strength. Yes, a little more honesty would be helpful for the new governor, including an admission that he mishandled the midnight madness and a decision to fully disclose his medical condition.

He needs to do something or his shaky start -literally and figuratively - will become indelible.