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Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. has raised anew the question of how much health information a candidate or politician should reveal to the public.

Most people expect that their health is a private matter. And for a politician or office seeker, such disclosures can be used . But when someone voluntarily enters the sphere of public service and elective office, do they have an obligation to inform their constituents about how well they can actually execute the job they’re asking to be elected to?

Fetterman . One reporter interviewed him during the 2022 Senate campaign and gave a firsthand account of how Fetterman seemed to have trouble . for suggesting that he was struggling to have a basic conversation. Throughout the 2022 U.S. Senate campaign, of his health.

In any other job interview in the U.S., it would indeed be forbidden – from a social – to ask about the applicant’s health. And it does not serve interest to pry too much into politicians’ lives.

But candidates who won’t disclose their medical records can put the voters at a disadvantage. Before citizens cast their ballots they should know pertinent information about health problems. Just as voters should know a candidate’s positions on issues, voters should know about politicians’ ability to advocate for those positions and to fully represent their constituents.

As The Philadelphia Inquirer editorial board wrote in October 2022, “It’s fair to question . Communication is part of being a senator. It’s perfectly reasonable for Pennsylvanians to ask about how well he is able to listen, speak, focus, and understand.”

There are consequences when politicians – and the media that cover them – aren’t transparent.

Precedent For Secrecy

History is full of examples of the . That, in turn, exacerbates a common perception with politicians in concealing important information from the public.

Traditionally, reporters hate cover-ups but seem to make an exception for health concerns. The media apparently consider it within the bounds of campaign job interviews to , , and .

But reporters practically become snooty, high-brow puritans at the thought of asking a politician .

Reporters In Cahoots

Campaigns and sitting politicians notoriously dodge health questions, . Journalists long acted as co-conspirators in .

For example, it had long been that Sen. Dianne Feinstein, now 89 years old, has lost much of her mental sharpness and her memory. Sen. Strom Thurmond did not retire until he was 100 years old, and . Thurmond regularly asked people to repeat themselves, and often spoke in unintelligible sequences of words.

Experiments I have conducted that test indicate that , causing voters to focus even more on what a candidate is hiding. Coming clean about health problems may actually bolster the public’s confidence more than claiming to have a clean bill of health and then being unable to do the job.

An extreme example of this problem is provided by . Unlike most politicians who lie about their health to sound as if they are impervious to maladies, the New York lawmaker took the opposite approach while campaigning for Congress. Santos listed all sorts of health problems he suffers from: acute chronic bronchitis, a brain tumor, an immunodeficiency, and susceptibility to cancer.

Most of Santos’ claims about his life other than his health . After he was elected, the media thoroughly investigated and dispelled his claims ranging from to saying he had . But Santos’ statements about his own mental or physical abilities . Santos was either lying or telling the truth about being unwell.

Either way, the public should have known.

Fit For Office

in the middle of the hotly contested Pennsylvania race for U.S. Senate, the . ” because he would bring more attention to disabilities in Congress, and said the health struggle was beneficial in helping him raise campaign money. That soft-pedaling echoed the Fetterman campaign’s own tendency to .

, and the public should , not given the impression that a stroke is a . in 2022. It would save lives if the public talked more, not less, about .

It’s also possible that by concealing a health condition from the public, the public – if and when it finds out – will get the message that the condition was hidden because it is a disabling one, when that may not actually be the case.

Fetterman’s current hospitalization at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center is for depression, Fetterman has experienced “off and on throughout his life.” The announcement of his hospitalization sparked an outpouring of support from colleagues and others. A fellow Democrat, Rep. “a courageous leader in sharing the circumstances of his hospitalization with the public.”

But because Fetterman did not reveal his full medical record during the campaign, voters were unaware of the condition that has now landed him in the hospital. Given the support shown after he checked into Walter Reed, it’s possible that revealing his depression would not have caused him a loss of voter support on Election Day.

Struggling with mental and physical ailments is . Someone who has depression can still be an effective legislator, but someone who needs to be hospitalized may be restricted from conducting essential functions of their work such as participating in committee hearings and voting on legislation.

It may be time to consider a political candidate’s health – their literal, physical fitness for the office – to be fair game for campaign disclosure. Asking politicians whether they have the ability to serve in office should not be off-limits, nor considered evidence of “ableism.”

If civil discussions of mental and physical health impairments can be held – rather than treated like stigmas that must be hidden – . Voters would have the facts they need to make well-informed decisions about who can best represent them, not just by sharing their views and values, but by actually performing the work associated with holding public office and serving their constituents.

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