Joseph Sabino Mistick: Oz is fun, but the Republic must come first

When Dr. Mehmet Oz, who is seeking the Republican nomination in the U.S. Senate race, made a campaign appearance in Westmoreland County last week, it had all the excitement of a celebrity event, with Oz supporters jockeying for selfies with the star-politician. Known as Dr. Oz on his television show, the candidate tickled the crowd with his broad smile and easy way with words.

If you have never seen Oz’s show, and you live in Pennsylvania, you are getting to know him these days anyways because he is locked in a campaign television ad battle with David McCormick, another well-heeled Republican who is seeking the same nomination. The warring candidates are flooding the airwaves as they alternately tout themselves and toss grenades at each other.

Both are betting that Pennsylvania voters prefer an outsider, someone who is not versed in the ways of governing and who thinks that’s an advantage. And they both seem to relish this slugfest, which is fun to watch, coming earlier and with more ferocity than usual. But the races for both parties’ nominations, with crowded fields for both, will have to be about more than fun.

Americans are more divided than ever, according to the experts, and there are frequent reminders that the nation is in jeopardy. Republicans could easily nominate a candidate who is too far to the right — and Democrats could just as easily nominate a candidate who is too far to the left — to ever give us a chance to come together behind achievable specific goals.

Thomas B. Edsall, in his recent New York Times column “America Has Split, and It’s Now in ‘Very Dangerous Territory,’ ” wrote that “polarization has become a force that feeds on itself, gaining strength from the hostility it generates, finding sustenance on both the left and the right.”

To bolster his point, Edsall cited a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace report, “What Happens When Democracies Become Perniciously Polarized?” written by Jennifer McCoy and Benjamin Press.

McCoy and Press said, “The United States is the only advanced Western democracy to have faced such intense polarization for such an extended period. The United States is in uncharted and very dangerous territory.”

As Edsall described our dilemma, “The electorate as a whole is moving further and further apart into two mutually loathing camps.” And he added, “Looking over the contemporary political landscape, there appear to be no major or effective movements to counter polarization.”

So how do we break the spell? In the end, it is up to each of us as voters, and supporting just left-of-center and just right-of-center candidates is a start. And they must be candidates who believe in the power of government to do good.

We must learn again to tolerate the other side and then try to compromise with them. This requires that we stop gathering around anger and rage and try to find those things that might cost us each a little for us both to gain a little.

We started as a contested society, and it sometimes seems a miracle that we lasted 250 years. But we have survived two revolutionary wars — one with the British and one with ourselves — and we can get through this with the help of Americans who put country ahead of party.