20 years ago today, Republicans were demanding Bill Clinton's medical records

(Image credit: Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images)

last updated 13 September 2016

If the 2016 election has given you an unnerving sense of 1990s déjà vu, this is going to make it worse. On Tuesday, with Hillary Clinton sidelined with pneumonia and Republicans demanding her health records, Bill Clinton is flying out to Los Angeles to headline some fundraisers for his wife's presidential campaign. Two decades ago — on Sept. 12, 1996 — President Bill Clinton was on a 24-hour fundraising trip through California for his own re-election bid, and, according to the Los Angeles Times, "White House officials scrambled to deal with questions about why they will not release the president's full medical records." The article, headlined "Questions on Health Records Dog Clinton" and unearthed on Monday by L.A. Times reporter Matt Pearce, gets even eerier:

At campaign stops over the last several weeks, Republican officials have repeatedly raised the issue of Clinton's health — often hinting without substantiation that Clinton suffers from some embarrassing medical condition.... The medical records question has dogged Clinton since the 1992 campaign. Then, as now, Clinton has authorized the release of only partial information about his medical condition. White House spokesmen and his physician have issued statements that he enjoys overall good health but have not provided detailed data from his annual medical exams. [L.A. Times]

Despite the similarities, there are notable differences, too. Bill Clinton, for example, was 50 years old and his opponent, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), was 73. Hillary Clinton is now 68, and her opponent, 70-year-old Donald Trump, has not "been more forthcoming, distributing results of a battery of medical tests and making his personal physician available for interviews," as the L.A. Times says of Dole. In fact, Trump has so far provided less medical information than Hillary Clinton. To learn what else has changed and what hasn't in 20 years — Bill Clinton's 1996 fundraiser featured Tom Hanks, Stephen Spielberg, and Barbra Streisand, for example — read more at the Los Angeles Times.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.