It’s none of my business what Barack Obama’s LDL cholesterol level is. And I don’t have to know that he is using nicotine therapy to attempt to kick his smoking habit. But all of this and more is dutifully passed along after the president’s annual physical. Want to know his resting heart rate? It’s available. And we’re told that President Obama has been instructed by his physicians to “eat healthier” and “moderate his alcohol intake.”

What to make of this annual invasion of privacy? We’ve been privy to similar details about other presidents — sometimes to an excruciating degree (President Carter revealed his troubles with hemorrhoids). In part, this may be a response to President Eisenhower’s 1955 heart attack. Treatment was less sophisticated then, and the president spent seven weeks in the hospital. That was discomfiting enough, but with the advent of nuclear weapons, the Cold War, and the “football,” anxiety about a possibly debilitated president led to passage of the 25th amendment to the Constitution, which provided for the smooth transition of power in the event the sitting president should die or become incapacitated.