Thinking of Trump: fighting back a tear
When this is over, Americans will have themselves to thank for the mitigation of the coronavirus.
Yes, thank goodness for Doctors Fauci and Birx and, to a greater or lesser extent, Vice President Pence, and to all those conscientious governors, Democrats and Republicans. They have served us well, or as least as well as they could, given the giant monkey on their backs.
As for President Trump, if or when we get past the death spiral of COVID-19, it will be no thanks to him. Americans have responded to the crisis not because of President Trump, but in spite of him.
If Franklin Roosevelt was the canny bus driver navigating a hazardous journey — the Great Depression and World War II — then Donald Trump is the wild-eyed wonder driving the bus first this way and then that, over Grand Canyon-size potholes, through thickets of prairie underbrush. There he is now, careening wildly from one side of the road to the other. With this guy, you’re never quite sure what you’re going to get.
Imagine Donald Trump at the helm during the Cuban Missile Crisis. No thank you. A steady hand at the wheel, he isn’t.
He makes people cry. He’s frightening.
Presidents err, with regulatory. Barack Obama was wrong in regard to Syria. George W. Bush failed badly in Iraq. Lyndon Johnson presided over the tragedy of Vietnam. Ronald Reagan had Iran-Contra and John Kennedy the Bay of Pigs. FDR tried to pack the Supreme Court. Even Washington and Lincoln had their moments.
But Trump is in a category all by himself. He makes James Buchanan look good. (Well, somewhat good.) Compared to him, Herbert Hoover was a champ.
The first U.S. coronavirus death occurred on February 29. Here we are, seven weeks later, and the number of deaths stands in excess of 30,000.
And the economy has collapsed.
Of course, COVID-19 itself can in no way can be laid at the president’s doorstep. Pathogens, in the absence of a vaccine, spring to life; they cluster, spread, and kill. This one is especially vicious.
But what is undoubtedly true is that the administration, thanks to the president, was slow – ever so slow – to react. Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington state is right. “At least a month was lost” because “the president was downplaying this problem and had not engaged the full force of the federal government.
“We should have been a month ahead on the supply chain compared to where we are,” Inslee said this past week.
Supporters of the president will say, “But he was distracted by impeachment.”
Or, they will say, the president was not the only one caught flat-footed by the virus. “Wall Street financial markets, military leaders and even public health planners didn’t respond presciently to early warnings from China,” foreign affairs columnist David Ignatius recently wrote.
All of which may be true, though the president swore he was not distracted, was not caught unawares. In fact, he said he knew before others that the virus was pandemic in nature. He was and has been on top of it.
If only he would tell the truth….
Democracy relies on consent, and nothing is more disheartening for a democratic leader than to blow a warning trumpet to little or no effect. “Social distancing” was not a realistic option open to the president in February.
Timing, as FDR knew, is everything. The time to declare war on Japan was December 8, 1941, not December 6.
But like FDR in the months leading up to the December 7 attack on Pearl Harbor, President Trump should have used January and February of this year to plan, prepare and strategize for the virus that his intelligence and health advisers warned him was coming. He utterly failed to alert the American people to the coming storm.
Presidents shed polling numbers not because they will it, but because they are faced, from time to time, with certain hard choices that are politically unprofitable.
But they make those choices, right or wrong. It’s their job.
Meanwhile, as the virus has raged, Donald Trump has continued to pick fights, has continued to be disrespectful, has continued to be mindlessly partisan, and has continued to thumb his nose at the Constitution.
The current crisis only seems to have exacerbated Donald Trump’s penchant for the penny-ante, the wild boast, the inane, the divisive.
It’s enough to make a grown man weep.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.