Oz v. Fetterman, beyond pills and pot
The way this year’s race for the open Pennsylvania Senate seat is shaping up, lots of us are going to feel slightly queasy no matter how we vote.
And that was true before the toilet paper billboard popped up in Braddock on Wednesday.
Dr. Mehmet Oz’s campaign had thetemerity to place a big ol’ ad in the heart of Lt. Gov. John Fetterman’s adoptedhometown, comparing toilet paper (“soft on skin, soft on bottoms ”) to the former mayor-turned- Senate candidate (“soft on crime ”).
Whether you see it as funny or cheap, the billboard’s message has the advantage of actually being about an important issue. Until now, too much of the contest’s coverage and conversation has mined the same, superficial, personal details we knew from the get-go. Or thought we knew.
Actually, as I and most other voters have started to pay closer attention to the race — a typical fall phenomenon — it’s been startling to see how much of the shallow stuff is mean,distorted or just plain wrong.
From the outset we heard the race was between a Republican “carpetbagger” and a “trust fund baby”Democrat. Between a “snake oil salesman” and a “poser.” Between an arriviste from New Jersey with more homes than he can count and a not-so-Average Joe living on family money well into middle age.
Those descriptions are bandied about by each man’s opponents.
Coming at things from a positive angle, while Mr. Fetterman’s fans embrace his tattooed, hoodie-wearing, bald-headed, man-of-the-people image as if it were genuine, there are precious few positive images gaining traction for Mr. Oz — not in media coverage, anyway.
That’s surprising, considering his accomplishments, and it’s surprising that Democrats would emphasize his “otherness.” Hypocritical, actually. Don’t we all love a tale of immigrant success?
The doctor is first-generation American, born in Ohio of Turkish parents. After graduating from Harvard University, he spent a few years in Philadelphia while earning both a medical degree and an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania, as well as leadership positions and awards.
Mr. Oz reached the public’s eye because of his prowess as a surgeon. That he enjoyed the attention should come as no surprise to anyone even slightly familiar with the medical world: Operating on human hearts requires a certain bravado. That he parlayed it into great success in other fields is an unusual achievement.
It’s hard to understand how his television career is held against him. “Snake oil salesman”? Even Wikipedia points out that he can’t control how his name and on-air comments are used or distorted by profit-seeking vendors — or, for that matter, by media-seeking politicians.
Each man has one resume entry that can’t be explained away to skeptics’ satisfaction. For Mr. Oz it is his service as an advisor to the Trump administration. To some voters, that’s toxic.
Mr. Fetterman’s inexplicable event dates to Braddock days: reacting to supposed gunfire by chasing after a Black jogger, brandishing a shotgun at him, accusing him of firing “a high-powered rifle” and repeating these false claims to police at the scene. Partisans will interpret this episode along party lines, but it’s hard to see how independents can warm to such rash behavior.
What’s a voter to do? Let’s call it a draw and move on from these, uh, colorful personalities to their policies.
Mr. Oz’s weakness is vagueness. He espouses the free-market capitalism he’s mastered, but details are scant.
Mr. Fetterman’s weakness is that his best-known ideas are woefully out-of-date. Legalizing marijuana? I can agree, since he’s dropped his support for legalizing literally everything.
Pardons for people serving life sentences? That won’t resonate with the nation’s soaring crime rates and thepublic’s mounting fears.
Voters can dig deeper on the candidates’ web sites. (They may find, as I did, that Mr. Oz’s web site is prose-heavy and visually uninviting, while Mr. Fetterman’s is stronger and clearer than he seems to be.)
Do they understand business and economies? Pandemics? Can they build coalitions? Based on their histories, what can they achieve on our behalf?
These two astonishingly different men have five weeks to make their case, and the polls are tightening.