Today, Explained - Dr. Oz and the celebrity politician

Episode Date: May 16, 2022

This week Pennsylvania voters decide whether to give Dr. Oz a shot at the US Senate. To mark the occasion, Sean Rameswaram tries to understand what makes a celebrity candidate viable, from “the Gipper” to “the Governator” to “the Donald.” This episode was reported and produced by Sean Rameswaram with an assist from Jon Ehrens, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, and engineered by Efim Shapiro. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dr. Oz wants to be Senator Oz, and on Tuesday the celebrity physician faces his first election. He's got the endorsement of the former president, a celebrity, and his entry into politics was inspired by Arnold Schwarzenegger, a celebrity. I'm a cop, you idiot! Arnold was inspired by Ronald Reagan, a celebrity, and for a brief time when Ronald Reagan was president the mayor of Carmel in his home state was Clint Eastwood, a celebrity. And around the time Reagan left office the mayor of Palm Springs became Sonny Bono, a celebrity.

And a year or so after Sonny died in a skiing accident, they got a new governor in Minnesota, Jesse Ventura, a celebrity. About a decade after that, Minnesota would send a new Senator to Washington, Al Franken, a celebrity. Washington is named after our nation's first President, George, who himself was something of a celebrity. On Today Explained, in light of Dr. Oz's very important Senate race, we're going to figure out what makes a celebrity politician viable. Why no one remembers Gary Coleman's bid for governor of California,

but we'll never forget Arnold's. I'm going to hang out with you until the end of time. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit Superstore.ca to get started. It's Today Explained. I'm Sean Ramos for him. I had just graduated from high school in the suburbs of Los Angeles when Arnold Schwarzenegger told a guy on the TV named Jay Leno that he wanted to be governor of California.

When I go to Sacramento, I will pump up Sacramento. I thought it was absurd, but people around me were stoked. I remember my buddy Joe Zev, he had just turned 18, was voting for the very first time and couldn't believe Arnold Schwarzenegger's name was going to be on the ballot. We were standing in the quad of my high school, and I asked him, What makes you think Arnold can run California? And Joe, indifferent to my question, goes, Dude, the Terminator!

That was almost 20 years ago, and I didn't really get what Joe Zev meant by Dude, the Terminator! Until last spring. I was back in Los Angeles at the time, visiting my mom, and we were trying to figure out what movie to watch. Mother, how are you? I called her up to try and figure out why she threatened to go to bed if we chose Terminator 2 Judgment Day. I don't know. Maybe he did some things that I didn't like. goes Terminator 2 Judgment Day. I don't know.

Maybe he did some things that I didn't like. What she means is Arnold cheated on a Kennedy. Yes, of course. Why did she get married to him? My mom loves a royal family. Well, I didn't think they sued each other. All capital crimes aside, she decided she liked hanging out with me more than she disliked Arnold,

so she would give Terminator 2 a chance, at least until she felt sleepy. But then something happened that anyone who's seen this movie would predict. I watched it till the end. My mom started the movie reclined on the couch, but it wasn't long before she started sitting up at full attention. Well, it was interesting, actually. It wasn't as bad as I thought. After about an hour, she had to use the lavatory, but she was like, pause it, pause it, pause it, pause it. I'll be back. And then during the third act, she was so into it, so astonished by what she was witnessing,

that she kept looking back at me on the other couch like, my son, are you seeing this? Excited, excited, excited, excited. She said it took her forever to fall asleep that night. I was wide awake. And she woke up transformed. Well, now I don't mind him. Decades of side eye washed away after just one viewing of Terminator 2 Judgment Day.

He's alright. And this is when it finally hits me. What Joseph said. Dude, the Terminator! Terminator 2 is so good, it made Arnold more than a Hollywood legend. It made people trust him. It made people want to vote for him to let him run the fifth largest economy in the world. But he wasn't the only big name running to replace

Democrat Gray Davis in California's 2003 total recall. Oh, no. I mean, he was the biggest name, but I mean, we had an incredibly odd cast of characters. John Myers is the Sacramento bureau chief at the Los Angeles Times. He covered the Arnold Beat way back before it was even the Arnold Beat, back when it was just a circus. Peter Uberoth, the former Major League Baseball commissioner. Gary Coleman, the actor from Different Strokes. An adult film actress, Mary Carey, Ariana Huffington. Wasn't Larry Flint in the mix, too? You are remembering correctly. My brain obviously had forgotten Mr. Flint. Larry

Flint, the publisher of Hustler, was also a candidate. Now, Arnold's obviously the biggest of all these names, but I want to know what made him a serious Republican candidate among so many punchlines, especially because Republican Dr. Oz, who is running in a key Pennsylvania primary this week that could decide which party controls the United States Senate, cites Arnold as an inspiration for his own entry into politics. Whether I'm skiing with him down a slope or participating in summits or helping with a new initiative, he over and over again reemphasizes that Mehmet, failure is not an option.

I think Dr. Oz may say that because Schwarzenegger had that bipartisan appeal and that he probably is the gold standard of how to kind of thread the needle in American politics when you're famous. He has always had some sort of a reverence for the political process and politics and governing. And people are going to be mystified by that

if they only know him from the Terminator movies. But, you know, you've got to look at his involvement on the President's Council on Physical Fitness during the first George Bush administration. And if you're still not convinced, I'll be back. His love of politics is embracing himself in an American flag when he took the citizenship oath. I mean, the other thing that people who do not live in California would know is that Schwarzenegger had been involved in a statewide ballot measure the year before

to provide funding for after-school programs at schools all across California. He had championed that. He had gone up and down the state in these campaign events, getting voters to approve this ballot measure. Prop 49 is the after-school initiative. It's the idea of Arnold Schwarzenegger. The goal is to take kids off the streets after school and into a safe, supervised, educational environment. Schwarzenegger had a connection to the process. He took it seriously. He surrounded himself with experts who had come from other governors' administrations. He saw the job as governing. I know a lot of Democrats have voted for Arnold Schwarzenegger because they believe that he was

serious. And that's the question now, I think, is Dr. Oz, is he serious? All right, so not only was Arnold the biggest, most likable name in a circus-like recall election of recognizable names, but he was demonstrably serious about government. Big name, likable, serious. I want to know if we were missing any other key metrics here when looking at what makes a celebrity politician like Arnold or Dr. Oz viable.

So I reached out to a political scientist. Anthony Nouns at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Who's taken up what turns out to be the sort of stigmatized study of celebrity politics. And maybe stigma is too strong a word, but certainly it's not something that some of your more serious guiding lights in our profession would get into. And I think, you know, a lot of it is that up until quite recently, you had a few people who broke through a Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger, but there were many, many more sort of joke celebrity candidates than there were real celebrity candidates. And it was just something that people just didn't take very seriously. But surely that's changing in light of

more recent events in this country and, say, current events in Ukraine? Yeah. And they're beginning to take it seriously, as you mentioned, of course, as they should. A comedian is now the leader of Ukraine, and we've had now two Trump and Reagan celebrity presidents. So I certainly think it's something we need to look a lot more at. Because of the stigma, there isn't yet an exact science to figuring out what makes a celebrity politician viable beyond the obvious name recognition of it all. But I asked Professor Nouns if he had his own personal checklist, and he did. Not surprisingly, it turns out that, you know, celebrities have a number of traits that make them sort of ideal for entry into politics. The first brings us right back to where we started.

My high school buddy, Joseph, losing his mind over Arnold. Number one, of course, it helps to be a popular celebrity as opposed to an unpopular celebrity. And I can't deny the fact that you like me right now. You like me. You know, there are some celebrities that are sort of universally reviled, people that nobody likes. Anne Hathaway. That's not who I was thinking. You know, I've done some experiments on some of this stuff in some of the research I did years ago. I think Screech from Saved by the Bell was a guy who was, you know, kind of anchored the scale. That's for old guys like me who

remember that show. Rest in peace, Dustin Diamond. There are celebrities who kind of are at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to celebrity approval ratings or, you know, Q ratings and things like that. And that, you know, so it helps to not be one of them. So trait one, be a celebrity who's actually charmed a few people in your time. Trait two? In addition to, I mean, some level of popularity, it's relatability. Yes, we drank beer. I liked beer. Still like beer. If you are sort of perceived as someone who is an out-of-touch movie star, pop star, whatever, you really don't have much of a chance. And no matter what anybody says about Donald Trump, the fact is, for whatever

reason of his own making or not, the fact is, on the relatability scale, he's pretty high. Despite living in a gold-lined tower over New York City or a resort in Palm Beach, Florida, trade three. Money. You have to be able to get money. There's not a ton of evidence that celebrities have a much easier time raising money than anybody else. But you do have to have that ability, which, you know, JD events did have some some deep pocketed friends, of course, as you know, at least one Peter Thiel. Yeah, it's good to have that guy around. Bloomberg, of course, is another example who I didn't think too much of, but more or less a celebrity candidate, not an entertainment celebrity.

But, you know, he's sort of living proof that being a celebrity is not enough because name recognition, very high and literally hundreds of millions of dollars. And that didn't get him anywhere. OK, so Michael Bloomberg probably lacked in the relatability column, maybe for a rich white businessman from New York, he wasn't overtly racist enough to be president. And I just say very simply, why doesn't he show his birth certificate? But I wanted to ask Professor Nouns, in addition to likability, relatability, and money, about what John told me made Arnold Schwarzenegger such a viable candidate in California. His seriousness, his political

credibility. Now, I've seen some research that suggests that credibility is a factor. Do you have any claim to be credible on political issues, which, for example, Ronald Reagan and, to some extent, Arnold Schwarzenegger had? Because these were guys who were engaged in politics, at least on some level, for years, if not decades. But the professor didn't personally like credibility as a trait of a viable celebrity candidate for one reason. I don't think I buy into that because Trump was not credible. A lot of the things he said were at odds with things he had said in the past. So I, though I have some colleagues, some fellow celebrity researchers who think credibility is important, I tend to think

that's not really the case. Credibility doesn't work as a universal trait of celebrity politicians, but it might make sense to consider it as part of what John Myers from the LA Times called the X factor. There is an Xactor, I think, in every election. You just don't know what you don't know. In Arnold's case, the X Factor could have been his credibility, but John has another more likely theory. Schwarzenegger's arrival came at the time where Californians were angry

and they were looking for someone to help them express that anger. Voters were frustrated with their state government, with their Democratic governor, and along came a rich Republican superstar outsider everybody loved. He maybe even had some political credibility to boot. But it all started with his popularity. When the Electoral College isn't around, politics is mostly just a popularity contest, and Arnold was the most popular candidate on the ballot. In fact, to this day, he is the most popular Republican in the country, polling way above Barack Obama's

successor. Professor Anthony Nowne says you strip away popularity and a celebrity politician ends up looking a lot like a regular one. The actual research on the subject kind of suggests that once you pass the bar, you know, you get on the ballot, you become a viable candidate, which celebrities seem to have an easier time doing than a lot of other people. A lot of the stuff that determines whether or not you succeed is the same stuff that determines whether or not any politician succeeds. In a minute, we head to Pennsylvania to find out whether popularity will be enough to make Dr. Mehmet Oz a United States senator. Or if he's got the likability, the relatability, the money, the credibility, the X factor to win the race. It's Today Explained. I'm Sean Ramos for them. And I'll be back.

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and it's time we talk about the Senate race in Pennsylvania. Perhaps you've heard about the 50-50 tie in the United States Senate? This is a no. Well, Democrats' best chance of making it 51-50 is in Pennsylvania this November. And it is by a country mile the most interesting, borderline bonkers political competition in the United States this year. You've got Pat Toomey retiring. He's one of only seven Republicans who voted to convict the former president of incitement, of insurrection, and impeachment to impeach harder.

Toomey's not doing his party a favor because this is Pennsylvania, a state Joe Biden won in 2020. And even with surging inflation, gnarly gas prices, and formula shortages, this is the state that gave the world Joe Biden. Scranton, when you're a kid, no matter how long you live here, climbs into your heart and occupies you. So many people you know are from Scranton. So many people from Scranton. The Democratic establishment is backing Conor Lamb to replace Toomey.

But it's not going well because Lamb is running against John Fetterman. Getting on Twitter every morning is like starting the day with a dog turd and motor oil smoothie. It's just horrible. If you're not familiar with the current Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania, he describes himself as Governor Tom Wolf's anger translator. And he looks like someone you'd want to avoid if he were angry. He's 6'8", shaved head, goatee, his arms are covered in tats, he mostly wears shorts and a hoodie, and he's married to a Brazilian-American named Gisele, but not that one. Oh, and he had a stroke

this weekend, just days before the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania, but he says he's okay. Hey, everybody. It's John and Gisele. As you can see, we hit a little bump on the campaign trail. It was on Friday. I just wasn't feeling very well. So I decided, you know what? I need to get checked out. So I went to the hospital. I made you get checked out.

Because I was right, as always. And I haven't even got to Dr. Oz yet. Dr. Oz is also running, though lately it's starting to feel more and more like he might end up and also ran. Unlike Joe Biden, he's not from Pennsylvania. He's from Ohio. His parents emigrated from Turkey. After college, Oz served in the Turkish army to maintain his dual citizenship. He came back to the United States and got about as famous as you can get as a heart surgeon before he met Oprah. And then he got a lot more famous.

Dr. Oz says there's something inside of us that we all have that plays a key role in making us fat. So what is, and do some of us have more than others? Some of us have more than others, yes. Yeah, I must have more than others. But as he got more and more famous, he became more widely regarded as a bit of a quack who would tell people things like, your astrological sign could determine your health. This one time, researchers at the British Medical Journal took a look at 40 episodes of the Dr. Oz show from one year and found that about half of his medical recommendations weren't supported by any research. But he got the ratings,

and you know who loves ratings. I was doing them, and we had a lot of people watching, record numbers watching. In the history of cable television, television, there's never been anything like it. When he became president, he named Dr. Oz to the same Council on Fitness Arnold Schwarzenegger had served on for George H.W. Bush. And when COVID hit, Oz became a hydroxychloroquine endorsing informal medical advisor to the now former president. And when Dr. Oz threw his hat in the ring for the Republican nomination in Pennsylvania, he got one key endorsement. I endorsed another person today, Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania. Dr. Oz, great guy, good man, good man, Harvard educated, tremendous, tremendous career. And they liked him for a long time. That's like a poll. You know, when you're in television for 18 years. Oz's entire political identity. His Facebook banner is the sad attempt to make it look like he and the former president did a photo shoot together.

His Twitter bio starts with Trump endorsed candidate for U.S. Senate. These two seem to love each other plenty. The question is, how do voters in Pennsylvania feel? Many of us here in Pennsylvania didn't even know he lived in Pennsylvania. In fact, he had, you know, very recently been a New Jersey resident. Holly Otterbein is a Pennsylvania resident. And I'm a national political reporter for Politico. Holly says this whole thing was supposed to go to some other guy.

There was a candidate named Sean Parnell who really seemed like he was going to win this thing. He was a veteran. He had Trump's endorsement. He was well-liked within the party. And, you know, it looked like it was basically not going to be much of a race. And then a few months ago, he dropped out in the middle of a child custody battle with his estranged wife during allegations that she was making that she had been a victim and her children had been a victim of his abuse. Enter Dr. Oz and this big hedge fund guy named David McCormick,

who have both been spending tons of money attacking each other. And then this past week, kind of out of nowhere, a nobody named Kathy Barnett, who's said a whole lot of homophobic and Islamophobic things in her day. I mean, this tweet says pedophilia is a cornerstone of Islam. Yeah, no, I don't think that's me. I would never have said that. She showed up and tied Oz and McCormick for first place in the polls. I can't emphasize to you enough just how much spending has gone on in this race,

how many millions of dollars of ads have been on TV in Pennsylvania saying, you know, how much both Oz and McCormick suck essentially, right? And so Republican primary voters are watching these ads, they're, you know, digesting all of this stuff. And, you know, a lot of them are looking for an alternative. And she has emerged as that person and that choice right now. It seems like there'd be no way an unknown with loads of baggage could upend Dr. Oz unless he was severely failing on some of the key traits a celebrity politician needs to win. So I asked Holly if she would run through them with me.

Yeah, absolutely. Trait one, likability. It's definitely mixed. A lot of Republican voters, they might think, you know, oh, he's a genius doctor, you know, good TV host, but they just don't think that he's one of them. Doesn't sound like it bodes well for trait two, relatability. Do they relate to him?

I don't get the sense that they do. No, I mean... Holly, we need a winner. And it might be trait three. Money? He's definitely got money, yes. He's extremely wealthy. He has been investing millions of dollars into the race. And, you know, he'll have lots left over to run in the general election if he makes it. Trait four was credibility. And I want to acknowledge that Professor Nounds wasn't crazy about this one, which might work out for Oz because...

He, you know, has these past statements that he's made that made him, you know, seem like he was on the other side of these very important issues for conservatives. You know, for instance, he made comments in the past that made him sound like he was for abortion rights, for gun control. He made supportive comments about trans kids. You know, all these things are very toxic in a Republican primary. One out of four, not looking great for the Doctor of Oz this week. But there always is that X factor. I endorsed another person today, Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania.

Dr. Oz. Big endorsement. That's an X factor here. But Holly's got another one. He's weird and interesting and, you know, Pennsylvania kind of likes weird candidates. Pennsylvania loves an odd duck. And this race is full of them. And Dr. Oz, he's a bona fide quack. I'm Sean Ramos from I made the show today with help from John Aarons, Matthew Collette, Laura Bullard, and the theme Shapiro shout outs to whole and Elvis Costello and Wiz Khalifa and Miss Lauren Hill. We are on the radio in partnership with WNYC. And today is

our first day on Michigan radio, W E K U in Kentucky and KCRW in Los Angeles, the station that inspired me to get into audio. Dreams come true. Thanks for listening to Today Explained.