"During the next few weeks, thanks to the miracle of modern radio-telemetry, the nation's TV screens became a scoreboard registering every detail of the President's _p_h_y_s_i_c_a_l_ and _m_e_n_t_a_l_ functions. His brave, if tremulous, heartbeat drew its trace along the lower edge of the screen, while above it newscasters expanded on his daily physical routines, on the twenty-eight feet he had walked in the rose garden, the calorie count of his modest lunches, the result of his latest brain-scan, read-outs of his kidney, liver and lung function. In addition, there was a daunting sequence of _p_e_r_s_o_n_a_l_i_t_y_ and IQ tests, all designed to reassure the American public that the man at the helm of the free world was more than equal to the daunting tasks that faced him across the Oval Office desk. For all practical purposes, as I tried to explain... the President was scarcely more than a corpse wired for _s_o_u_n_d_."