WHAT IS DISQUALIFYING?
Is John Fetterman’s disability disqualifying? His speech has been impaired by a stroke and he struggled in his one debate with rival U.S. Senate candidate Mehmet Oz.
The media reacted melodramatically, if predictably: Oh my God, this guy can’t talk very well.
And the Republican propaganda machine reacted even more predictably: His impairment is disqualifying. He is unfit to serve. Really?
Unfit?
This seems an incredible assertion to me, even coming from yahoos and professional propagandists.
For it is made in the context of our times, in which everyone says he or she sympathizes with the disabled. Indeed, it sometimes seems as if almost everyone wants to claim a disability of some kind for himself or herself, or for his or her children.
If we really reject Fetterman because his speech and immediate cognitive processing tools are somewhat damaged by a stroke, I guess we are less than entirely serious about transcending disability prejudice. Or about growing our compassion, even as we define disability down.
This man has a real disability. But (a) it is not permanent and (b) it has not affected his ability to think. Only to speak.
It is not a mental impairment, but a physical one.
It is troubling that this distinction has been somewhat lost.
It is also interesting that we think of a legislator, and a leader, as essentially a talker. Shouldn’t he or she be more? The Senate is not legislating much these days. But today almost all senators, at least the ones we recognize, are big talkers.
It should not necessarily be so. And it hasn’t always been so.
Mike Mansfield and Bob Dole, to name two great Senate giants, and Senate party leaders, of semi-recent times were, neither one, great talkers. (Dole was a wise-cracking wit.)
Mansfield became more taciturn and economical with words as his public life ticked down. He ended his career as ambassador to Japan. Mansfield smoked a pipe and listened, hard. He said “yes” and “nope” and nodded. He was a master legislator and a magnificent human being. It was he who convinced young Joe Biden not to quit the Senate when Mr. Biden was in despair after the death of his wife and daughter and near death of his sons.
Both Mansfield and Dole were workhorses, greatly respected by colleagues. Both men distrusted press conference senators.
Talk is cheap in Washington. One of the worst talkers of the last century was Dwight Eisenhower, one of our greatest leaders, doers, and men.
You don’t have to be a great talker to be a great or even good senator. And some of the people who talk least in the Senate today, like Jack Reed or Maggie Hassan, get the most done. Some of the biggest talkers, like Lindsey Graham and Rand Paul, get little done.
I am not saying that Mr. Fetterman has the makings of a Mike Mansfield. Indeed, my reservation about Mr. Fetterman is that, though he worked hard as mayor of Braddock, I have never heard him express a brave, original or thoughtful political position. He has been a reflexive and mostly reflection-free leftist spouting slogans: for most of his life, a walking bumper sticker. He could change, of course. To me he has been more reflective and thoughtful since his stroke.
But Mehmet Oz shows even less qualification for the Senate, and even less interest in legislation and leadership. He has shown no national policy chops at all, nor interest in adopting them. He has shown little familiarity with or interest in the state he seeks to represent.
Mr. Oz, of course, talks well. He is a professional talker. But he says nothing. He is literally a snake oil salesman. But at least the elixirs and cures he pushed in his former life had some kind of embodiment.
This cannot be said of his politics. Of his politics it can fairly be said: There is no there, there.
Except for one thing. He says he would vote for Donald Trump if he ran for president again. Honestly?
How would this be good for the country?
I find this statement almost disqualifying, not just because we now know definitively that Mr. Trump tried to overthrow the constitutional order, but because I think Mr. Oz knows better.
Mr. Oz strikes me as a man as cynical as he is vapid.
The sad truth is that either Mr. Oz or Mr. Fetterman would likely be no more than a reliable vote for his party as, also sadly, the current U.S. senators from Pennsylvania are.
Honestly, very few senators are ever more than that, back in the day, or now.
Only a few stand out, make a difference and lead. And often the great and near-great ones — Taft, McCain, Ted Kennedy, Dole, Phil Hart — had health challenges and disabilities and did some of their best work while working through them.
Perhaps Mr. Oz could develop into a pragmatic Republican who gets things done, like the soon-to-retire Rob Portman or retired Lamar Alexander. But I doubt he has the ambition.
John McCain wanted to be
Daniel Webster. Why does Mr. Oz want to be a U.S. Senator?
Perhaps Mr. Fetterman will become an economic patriot, a U.S. trade and manufacturing hawk, like Ohio’s Sherrod Brown, Tim Ryan or Marcy Kaptur. Mr. Ryan, in his Senate campaign, has actually made a case and carved out a position this year.
Mr. Fetterman would need more focus and discipline than he has ever shown to so define himself.
One can say that Ohio’s politics in 2022 at least somewhat reflects the suffering of the people of Ohio. No so, Pennsylvania. Nothing but posture, blather and attack.
Pennsylvania has had some doers in its past congressional delegations, as mentioned here before: Hugh Scott, John Heinz and Harris Wofford in the Senate. In the House, the late John Murtha was a force. Mike Doyle served quietly but effectively. And Tim Murphy was on his way to being a House powerhouse.
But mostly the state has been represented and is being represented by people who just show up, fill space and vote the way their party directs them.
Just being there, being a warm body with 24/7 press availability, should be the ultimate disqualifier.