Jesse Jackson Jr. - Is a Person with Bipolar Disorder Electable?

This one I am intentionally posting as myself.
I'm a conservative on most issues (on the others the same religious, economic, and legal education, and professional and life experience, which includes living with clinical depression since childhood, that make me a Republican on most issues convince me that too many conservatives and Republicans have got some issues wrong contrary to their own professed core beliefs in individual liberty, etc.) and often disagreed with Jackson, Patrick Kennedy, etc.
A very good, very bright friend of mine, who had told me Winston Churchill was his hero, and who I had told about my life-long and formerly suicidal clinical depression, treatment, etc., and who agrees with me on most issues, once told me that he could never vote for a Presidential candidate who had ever had mental illness. As gently as I could, I pointed out to him that Winston Churchill had written of the "black dog" of his own chronic clinical depression while leading Britain through Wourld War II in the days before modern antidepressants, Abraham Lincoln's "melancholia" (depression, which I have read led him to write at least one letter about sometimes being afraid to carry a pocket knife, etc. George Wallace of Alabama, with whose politics and racial views (until he reformed later) I disagreed, and an Oregon U.S. Senator (I think Packwood if my recollection is right after years) continued in politics after their VA records of "battle fatigue", i.e., PTSD, were illegally leaked by their political opponents. Highly decorated World War II hero Audie Murphy, from here, had spoken of his "battle fatigue" too, so don't tell me our vets with that are not brave. I have known several people who, like Eagleton, have had ECT, and the one who had it most recently (improved process) is in good mental shape and I would trust him with a deer rifle or the launch code for a nuclear war. I have known some officials elected or appointed to all three branches of government as provided, who I knew, in privileged and confidential relationships and communications, had significant mental health issues and treatment histories, but the voters did not, although in some cases I think the media did and covered for them for political rather than privacy reasons. Some were good, some were lousy, corrupt, etc., just like other politicians. I have also known a few who didn't think they needed anything who I thought were wrong.
If I had been Jackson's family, close friends, or campaign manager, I hope I would have urged him to get help before this got to the point it apparently did.
When they asked Wallace's doctor if he was a viable candidate after he was shot and paralyzed, and after his VA mental health record had been illegally published, if, in his expert professional opinion, Wallace was a viable cndidate, he wisely said "He's a viable man. Whether he's a viable candidate is not within my expertise and is for the voters to decide."
Whether a given incumbent or new candidate can come out and talk about his treatment for mental illness and still get elected, given the very prevalent bias, prejudice, and stigma against "mental patients," as a class (lumping very different conditions and present status' together), which even still exists in state and federal case law, is another question.
Come on, now. I'm a retired lawyer and pretty good at research, and we often vote on candidates we don't really know, and can't find out, enough about to make a rational decision whether or not to trust them to come into our homes and fix our toilets, work in a day care center, be alone with their own or anyone else's child, or to hold a position of public trust and power. Attorney-client confidentiality representing children prevents me from telling you, or the voters, why some I know won't vote for their family members, but if your daughter, etc., is being treated for the effects of abuse at home and won't vote for you, you won't get my vote either.

I am saying "no". Its too soon. I know its a horrible thing to say because I am sure politics is a true passion for him but he has a couple of years of therapy and recovery ahead of him before any stress like that can even be considered coming back into his life. I do wish him the best though and I hope he gets better care then Obama-care in 2014; otherwise we will probably never hear from him again.

It really depends what spin you put on it, and how you sell the whole package to the voters. Could go either way, really.

I think the fact that he has been in a hospital and not at his job, as well as his legal troubles, are not helping matters. If a congressperson who was managing their illness well, and had been performing their job well, were to "come out" after a couple of terms and admit to ongoing treatment for a mood disorder- it might be ok. Maybe. But if you only disclose after you crash your car or get investigated for for corruption, and miss a lot of time while in "treatment," I don't think it will work. And really, we need elected officials who we are in good enough health to be able to show up for votes on the floor. He is not- and it doesn't matter what illness he has that is keeping him away.

Well the fact that he returned to Mayo right after the Feds decide to investigate him is also a possible factor. As a political activist who now lives in the Chicago burbs, I can tell you this issue did not come up until he was involved in the Rod Blagovich fall. He has repeatedly been investigated and questioned. When he first went to Mayo the first time he declared it was for Gastrointestinal issues.
He's very well liked in his area. It's Chicago anything is possible.