When (And How) Is A Candidate’s Health Fair Game?

There is a very interesting Senate race underway in Pennsylvania. The race promised to be unconventional from the beginning, with tall, bald, goateed, tattooed, sweatshirt-wearing Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman taking on TV celebrity and political neophyte Mehmet Oz. But the race really took a turn when Fetterman suffered a stroke in May–an apparently severe stroke that Fetterman now says almost killed him–causing “Dr. Oz” to go on the attack about whether his opponent is healthy enough to do the job.

There are lots of issues that candidates for a Pennsylvania Senate seat would logically address, but Fetterman’s health became a focus after his campaign limited his appearances and he has had obvious problems with halting speech when he has participated in rallies. The Oz campaign, which has been trailing in the polls, has tried to capitalize on the issue by pressing for a debate. And, because modern politics can’t resist the gutter, the Oz campaign has done so in cheap and mean-spirited ways–such as by promising that it would pay for any medical personnel Fetterman might need to have on standby during a debate.

The Oz campaign tactics have been sharply criticized, but the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and others have increasingly recognized that Fetterman’s fitness to serve is a legitimate issue. As the PPG editorial put it: “If Mr. Fetterman’s communication skills have not yet recovered sufficiently to effectively debate his opponent, many voters will have concerns about his ability to represent them effectively in Washington.” The editorial also noted that the Fetterman campaign was unduly optimistic about his condition and his prognosis, and that recovery in the aftermath of a stroke is “notoriously unpredictable.”

Yesterday the press reported that the Fetterman campaign has agreed to a debate on October 25–two weeks before Election Day. The parties are still wrangling about details, but one of the conditions that has been agreed upon is that Fetterman will be able to watch a closed captioning device during the debate to deal with his acknowledged auditory processing issues, and that debate viewers will be told about that. With a debate now on the schedule, the PPG has called upon the Oz campaign to stop the attacks that, in the newspaper’s words, has turned the race into “an exercise in insult comedy rather than a serious contest on the merits of the candidates as potential U.S. Senators.”

Anyone who has known a stroke victim, as many of us have, will recoil at a political system in which an opponent thinks it is appropriate to disrespect and make fun of someone struggling with post-stroke limitations. Even by modern political standards, that’s low. At the same time, strokes clearly can be debilitating, and it is reasonable to question, with decency and respect, whether someone recovering from a stroke and experiencing impaired auditory processing can actually perform the duties required of a U.S. Senator. I expect that many curious Pennsylvania voters will tune in on October 25, wondering what they might see.

Debatable

The sheer number of current and likely Republican candidates for President in 2016 is testing the boundaries of how the candidate selection process should work.  Currently, there are more than a dozen announced and anticipated candidates whose names you are likely to have heard of — and if you credit a website called 2016.republican-candidates.org you’ll see many more candidates who have, until now, wallowed in the realm of obscurity.

Believe it or not, the first Republican debate for the 2016 campaign is less than three months away.  It will be held in Cleveland on August 6, 2015 and broadcast by Fox News.  But how do you broadcast a meaningful debate with more than a dozen participants?  Fox has decided that you don’t.  It will allow only the top ten candidates, as shown in the five most recent national polls prior to the debate, to participate.  CNN, which is broadcasting the second debate in September, has taken a different approach:  it will hold one debate with the top ten and another with a second-tier group of candidates that get at least 1 percent support in the polls and have at least one paid campaign worker in at least two of the first four states that will hold caucuses or primaries.

Already people are wondering what these decisions mean, both in terms of the role of networks in the selection process and how campaigns are organized.  Should networks be able to winnow out those who can participate in a public debate, and won’t the Fox and CNN rules mean that campaigns will have to be conducted with an eye toward getting the candidates into the top ten tier prior to the debates?  And what does it all mean for the chances of dark-horse candidates and the Republican process?

I think networks have the right to limit participants in forums they provide.  They shouldn’t have to give valuable air time to every person who has declared their candidacy — a list that, according to the 2016.republican-candidates.org website, includes people named Skip Andrews, Michael Bickelmeyer, Kerry Bowers, and Dale Christensen (and that’s just going through the first three letters of the alphabet).  At some point, too, “debates” in which there are throngs of debaters become unmanageable and pointless, either because they turn into scrums in which people are talking over each other or are given so little time to respond that you learn almost nothing meaningful about the candidates’ positions on the issues.  You might question how the field is winnowed — it seems to me, for example, that any person who has been elected governor of a significant state is sufficient serious to warrant inclusion — but some selection mechanism inevitably will be used.

Will it change how campaigns are run?  Certainly.  A process that has become increasingly front-loaded will now become even more so, with candidates planning appearances and spending money so that they increase their chances of getting into the initial top ten and get that national debate exposure.  It also means that people who seem to be on the fence, like Ohio Governor John Kasich, had better make a decision so they are included in the crucial public opinion polls.  And will it hurt dark-horse candidates like former CEO Carly Fiorina or Dr. Ben Carson?  Not necessarily, in my view.  If candidates have an appealing message, they will get noticed.  Now, they’ll just have to work on doing it earlier.

You’ll hear people saying that all of this is bad for our democracy, but let’s not kid ourselves.  The role of money in politics, and the increasing focus on early caucuses and primaries, have made it increasingly difficult for outlier candidates to become mainstream.  That’s just the reality of the world.  Not being included in a debate in August 2015 isn’t necessarily going to be fatal to a 2016 presidential candidate, either.  How many people aside from political junkies are going to be watching it, anyway?

These early debates may be of great interest to pundits and provide strong performers with alleged momentum, but they’re not going to make a significant dent in the national consciousness.  They’ll be the first shows in a long series of shows — so why not let the producers set rules that they think will make the shows more entertaining?

What If They Gave A Debate And Nobody Cared?

With all of the focus on the Buckeye State in the presidential election, we Ohioans can be excused for forgetting that we will be voting on many races on November 6.  For example, we’ll be deciding whether to retain incumbent Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown or elect Republican Josh Mandel instead.

Normally a Senate race is a big deal, but this year I’m not hearing anyone talk about the Brown-Mandel contest — and I work in an office where many people, from both parties, are very interested in politics.  The candidates have had three debates, but only one was broadcast on TV and I don’t know anyone who watched it.  I’m sure that all of the debates were fully covered in the daily newspapers, but Kish and I don’t subscribe to a daily newspaper any longer, and I haven’t seen any coverage of the debates when I’ve visited state news websites.  As a result, I assume that not much happened — no gaffes, no knee-buckling zingers, and probably not much of in the way of any kind of news.

I think that means lots of people will be voting on Election Day without much information.  If Ohioans know anything about the race, they know that Sherrod Brown backed the GM-Chrysler bailout.  Brown mentions that whenever he can; if he could walk around carrying a large flashing billboard advertising that fact, I think he would.  Mandel, on the other hand, is a relative newcomer to politics who presents himself as a fiscal conservative tax-cutter; if most Ohioans know anything about him, it is that he served in the military post-9/11.  The campaign ads haven’t done much to address the information deficit, either.

An electorate with ADD is going to be unpredictable, and therefore the polls — which indicate that Brown is ahead by anywhere from one to nine points — probably don’t mean much.  People will get into the voting booth and make a decision, and name and party affiliation will likely tell the tale.  Fortunately for the incumbent, Brown has always been a magical name in Ohio politics.  If Mandel is going to win, he’d better hope that Mitt Romney wins and has very long coattails.