Editorial: Do elected officials owe their constituents health reports?

We were glad to see the photo Sunday of a smiling Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, alongside his wife, Elaine Chao. The 84-year-old McConnell revealed Sunday that he had been hospitalized following a rough June 14 fall at his home leading, he said, to "mild pneumonia."

In a statement, McConnell attributed the lack of information as to his whereabouts to his reticence, as an older American, to share health information. "Folks of my generation often hesitate to share the vulnerability that comes with growing older," he said. "Even in the public eye, I feel that same instinct - I can't help it."

Well, with all due respect to McConnell, he should help it.

There is no shame in having a fall, going to a hospital or entering rehab. The senator's disappearance from the public eye led to all manner of public speculation, much of it cruel and also unwelcome fodder for many Americans' worst instincts. We should all wish our elected officials well when it comes to their personal health and look forward to their return to provide service to their constituents.

McConnell is hardly alone in this reticence. Rep. Tom Kean Jr., R-New Jersey, disappeared for some four months, missing House votes throughout, before finally revealing on June 30 that he had been suffering from depression and had been hospitalized. He explained this by saying that he had at first thought he could "push through" his condition and "did not believe that this would result in a long-term stay." There is no shame in suffering from depression, either. Kean should have been more forthcoming.

The complexity here, of course, is that we're all legally entitled to some privacy over our health and rightly so. But we'd argue that elected officials should not stay silent when they have to be absent from votes nor (as in Kean's case) merely reference a "personal medical matter" that gives constituents insufficient reasonable information. These officials are not obligated to disclose everything, but there is a reasonable middle ground here that respects voters' rights to know about the health of their representatives. We've seen many examples of the opposite, including the Princess of Wales in the U.K., who disclosed her cancer diagnosis in 2024, and Sen. John Fetterman whose office disclosed, in a timely way, several medical events involving the Democratic Pennsylvania senator.

On a different but related matter, we also were glad to hear the office of Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who died Saturday, provide the presumptive cause of death but emphasize that details would come only after a full autopsy report. The death of the senator from South Carolina also was a catalyst for some Americans' nastier instincts, too - a continuance, you might say, of President Donald Trump's refusal to be gracious about the public service of Robert Mueller following Mueller's death in March.

We of course support the full journalistic accounting of a political figure's professional life. But we can believe in that and still abhor the cruelty and lack of grace we see all around us these days. Given that reality, secrecy only makes things worse.

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This story was originally published July 14, 2026 at 12:49 PM.