Fetterman, Trump, and our double standards on ableism

Here’s a quick news quiz: In its coverage of a prominent politician, which partisan media outlet declared that “there have long been questions about [his] ... physical wellbeing that have gone largely unaddressed?”

Was it Fox News, jabbing at John Fetterman during his recent Senate campaign? Nope. The correct answer is MSNBC, after videos of President Donald Trump’s 2020 address at West Point appeared to show him having trouble walking down a ramp and raising a glass of water to his mouth.

I didn’t hear any of my fellow Democrats decry the coverage of Trump as “ableist.” But somehow, we felt OK affixing that label to anyone who wondered aloud about Fetterman’s capacities following the stroke he incurred last spring.

Welcome to the Great American Ableism Game. The rules are pretty simple: It’s OK to question the other person’s abilities, at any time. But when they question yours, just play the ableism card.

So when Fox and its friends scour every malapropism by President Joe Biden for signs of senility, Democrats cry foul. But when the White House was occupied by Trump, who is just three years younger than Biden, critics on the left routinely claimed that his cognition was declining.

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough said that Trump’s mental lapses reminded him of his mother, who lived with Alzheimer’s disease for a decade. “It’s getting worse, and not a single person who works for him doesn’t know he has early signs of dementia,” Scarborough declared.

And if Trump hadn’t lost his mind, critics said, he surely must have a diseased one. Despite the so-called “Goldwater Rule” barring psychiatrists from diagnosing mental illness in public figures, some members of the guild confidently told reporters that Trump suffered from narcissistic personality disorder.

Let’s be clear: Ableism is real, and it suffuses our society. Surely we should not malign people for their physical or mental disabilities (as Trump notoriously did, by mocking a disabled journalist). Nor should we discriminate against them in employment; instead, we should provide the support and accommodations that they need.

But in a country increasingly governed by very old people — think Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, and James Clyburn — we also shouldn’t dismiss any questioning of their capacities as ableist or ageist. Of course it’s unfair to assume they can no longer do their jobs well. But it’s perfectly fair to ask if they can.

And sometimes, history reminds us, the answer will be no. Strom Thurmond (R., S.C.) served in the U.S. Senate until the age of 100, by which time he needed staffers to tell him which questions to ask in hearings. Sen. Thad Cochran (R., Miss.) was so confused that he mistakenly cast a yes vote on an amendment despite repeated reminders that his party’s leadership opposed it. (He eventually changed his vote to no.)

Most recently, two Senate colleagues of 89-year-old Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) told reporters that she sometimes does not fully recognize them. It’s not discriminatory to wonder whether Feinstein still has the ability to serve in the Senate. It’s common sense.

That brings us back to John Fetterman, who displayed remarkable grace and courage in the face of his stroke. But just as everyone ages at different rates, so do they experience strokes in different ways. And we don’t really know about Fetterman’s condition, because we never received an independent evaluation of it.

If that’s what Fetterman wanted, he might have asked a team of neurologists at leading hospitals in Pennsylvania — say, Penn, Pitt, and Jefferson — to examine him. Instead, he released a statement from his personal physician (who has also donated to his campaign) declaring that Fetterman “can work full duty in public office.”

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That reminded me of none other than Trump, whose own doctor famously released a letter asserting that his patient would be “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” Many of us scoffed at the hyperbole of the letter, which was — as the doctor later admitted — dictated by Trump himself. But we were also skeptical of any claim by a physician who was handpicked by the patient he was evaluating.

I have enormous respect for Fetterman, whose plain-spoken style allows him to connect with constituents in a manner that’s rare for contemporary politicians. I don’t think he would want us to bite our tongues about anything, including his post-stroke condition.

If it’s OK to question Trump’s capacities without being called an ableist, then it should be OK to do the same with Fetterman. Period. Careless accusations of ableism don’t do anything to help disabled people. They simply make us less able to talk to each other.

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches education and history at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of “Whose America?: Culture Wars in the Public Schools,” which was published in a revised 20th-anniversary edition this fall by the University of Chicago Press.