It’s fair to question Fetterman’s fitness after his stroke

After months of speculation, Democrat John Fetterman finally agreed last week to a single debate with his Republican opponent in the Senate race, Mehmet Oz. Where and when this debate will happen — and if it will happen at all — is still unclear, but the mounting pressure on Fetterman to participate has highlighted the question of whether he is up for the job of representing the commonwealth in the U.S. Senate.

Senators like to call their chamber “the world’s greatest deliberative body.” We can disagree over whether it has lived up to that title in recent years. But the phrase does capture the ideal, at least, of what the Senate was meant to be. The job entails discussing, debating, listening, and persuading. It need not be physically onerous (although campaigning for the job can be exhausting), but done right, it is mentally demanding.

The exact degree to which Fetterman was incapacitated by his stroke in May is still unknown, mostly because the candidate and his campaign have worked hard to hide it. They initially acted like the incident was minor, which worked long enough to win the primary. Doctors questioned the story soon after, and the campaign was forced to admit there was more than they were telling, and that the lieutenant governor was still dealing with issues related to auditory processing and speech — but not until after the Aug. 15 deadline for replacing a candidate had passed.

» READ MORE: Fetterman agrees to 1 debate against Oz in Pa. Senate race

It’s not clear why the campaign waited so long. Maybe they thought Fetterman would be back to full health by now. But that was always unlikely. According to stroke expert Ray Reichwein at Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, only 25% of people who experience the same stroke as Fetterman fully recover their mental faculties.

With the start of the campaign season, Fetterman has been forced — recovered or not — to return to the trail. His speeches reveal that while he may make a full recovery in time, he certainly has not yet done so. Now that mail-in voting is widespread in Pennsylvania, each day that passes without a detailed disclosure about how Fetterman was affected by the stroke is one in which Pennsylvanians will make a choice without having as much information as they should about the Democratic nominee’s health.

The exact degree to which Fetterman was incapacitated by his stroke in May is still unknown.

When Donald Trump declined to fully release his medical records as a candidate in 2016, it was seen as deceptive, depriving the voters of a full picture of the man’s health. Hillary Clinton’s campaign was also chided for its secrecy about her health, especially after a fainting spell on the campaign trail. These were fair concerns then, and they are now with Fetterman. The public does not need to know every single detail about his physical makeup, but it’s perfectly reasonable to ask about how well he is able to listen, speak, focus, and understand.

Both of Pennsylvania’s sitting senators agree that communication is a big part of the job. Pat Toomey said recently at an Oz campaign rally that the job requires “intense and sometimes informal, sometimes spontaneous oral communication.” Bob Casey said that committee hearings and meetings are a lot of what he does, but insisted that Fetterman “will be more than prepared to do that.”

It is unsurprising that a Republican says the Democrat is not up to the job and a fellow Democrat says he’ll be fine. That’s politics, and in a heated campaign season, everything gets viewed through the lens of political tribalism.

Recent news articles have questioned Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s fitness for office. Many of those raising concerns about the 89-year-old’s mental acuity are Democrats who want their state to be represented by a different Democrat who is up to the job. Should Fetterman prevail in November without fully recovering, similar concerns will be raised by his fellow Democrats — but most likely only if Josh Shapiro wins the governor’s race and can appoint a replacement.

The Oz team was absolutely correct to raise the question of their opponent’s cognitive fitness, especially when no one else was willing to talk about it. But the campaign did it in the most ham-handed and crude way possible, with tweets and statements (later walked back by the candidate) that seemed to poke fun at Fetterman’s health. It let Fetterman off the hook, allowing him to spin the story as Oz making fun of his disability, rather than putting the focus where it should be: on the disability itself.

Oz should leave the social media insults to his opponent and focus on the question of whether Fetterman is able to articulate and defend his political views to the voters. If he can’t do that, there’s not much chance he’ll be effective at representing us in the Senate.

Kyle Sammin is editor-at-large at Broad + Liberty.