TRUMP WAS BAD, BUT COULD HAVE BEEN WORSE
Matt Gurney says ex-president wasn't up to the task of the office even before COVID.
If you want to blow minds in polite company these days, tell them you are relieved that Donald Trump's presidency wasn't even worse than it was.
Even worse? But what about the kids in cages? The 400,000 dead from COVID -19? A Western alliance in tatters and American society so bitterly, angrily divided that 25,000 troops were deployed to the United States Capitol to maintain order?
It's all bad, for sure. But it could have been worse, and we are damned lucky it wasn't.
The president of the United States is, of course, a politician, a leader of a political party and, more broadly, a segment of society. But the president is also the chief executive of a massive, vital institution — the U.S. government. We are seeing, in America's struggling COVID -19 response, the danger an absentee or incompetent executive can pose. Not all of the country's COVID woes land at the feet of the president, of course, but some certainly do.
And that's why things could have been worse. If you think Trump handled COVID-19 badly, imagine him trying to handle something worse. Because yes, friends, to paraphrase our prime minister, worse is always possible. It seems crass to say it, as the death toll continues to move so swiftly upward, but COVID itself could have been vastly worse.
It's contagious and sneaky, but not particularly deadly for most of us. That's a quirk of fate; it could have easily been much more deadly. (Indeed, it could still mutate and become so, which is a terrifying thought we'll just have to live with.) Beyond the coronavirus, there were any number of other disasters, worse than this, that could easily have occurred.
Every presidency is a four- (or eight-) year commitment to be the person on the line when the phone rings in the dead of night, with only God knows what kind of bad news waiting on the other end. A lot has gone wrong these last four years, but, for the most part, that phone didn't ring.
Yet that was a risk during every single day of Trump's presidency. The man who couldn't be bothered to stick around for his successor's swearing in was the man in control of America's nuclear arsenal, the man who would have been tasked to respond to unimaginable pressures at a moment's notice. And Americans knew him for what he was when they voted him in.
It has been fascinating, in the weeks since the attack on the
U.S. Capitol, to see even those who'd stood by President Trump's side throughout so much suddenly decide he'd gone too far. These last-minute conversions and epiphanies, of course, were entirely self-serving — people making a frantic scramble to get back on the right side of history at the last possible moment.
For those of us, even those normally inclined to support the Republican candidate for president, who'd never had any illusions about the kind of man Trump is, the sight has been laughable. There was absolutely nothing about the president's conduct in recent weeks or months that wasn't predictable — and indeed, had been predicted. Trump is Trump. He could never be anything else.
Four years ago, many people preferred the generic Republican platform, or Trump's stated priorities, enough to overlook his personal failures, total lack of relevant experience and obvious absence of interest in the essential duties of a U.S. president.
They liked the tax cuts, or disliked Hillary Clinton, or felt that Trump might prove a needed jolt to a system in desperate need of reform. That was all fine in the abstract, but Americans couldn't vote in the abstract. They had to choose who they felt was the right person to be the final authority, and they chose Donald Trump.
Trump got some stuff right — history will recall his contributions to Middle East peace, for example, as a somewhat perplexing bright spot in his otherwise bleak legacy. But he wasn't capable of rising to the demands of the office even before the pandemic, and never bothered trying during it. He wouldn't have, even if it had been worse, or a more dangerous, more urgent threat presented itself. He simply wasn't a serious, moral enough person for that awesome responsibility.
President Joe Biden has the nuclear codes now. He'll answer any middle-of-the-night phone calls. Biden is not a perfect man, and he'll be wrong on any number of policy issues — starting with a pipeline he should allow to be built. But he understands the world, America's place in it and the power of the presidency. He can be trusted, as much as anyone can be, with the basic responsibilities of the office, including control over the most deadly weapons in the world.
It's easy to forget that this is indeed the basic responsibility of the job. It's always easy to forget the stuff you try to put out of your mind. But the last four years have been a reminder to us all that the world is not as safe and easy as it can sometimes seem to us in the West.
Political differences are real. Policy debates are vital. But in the final analysis, you need to trust even a president you may not normally support to be trustworthy with the ultimate responsibility. Before voters ask themselves about where a president stands on any particular issue, they have to ask themselves a deeper question: is this person up to the task of being the person who decides, in six minutes or less, to wipe whole nations from the face of the Earth?
Trump wasn't. Biden, by all indications, is. Let's hope Americans never take such a chance on all our futures again. Because, again: this could have been worse. And the last guy wouldn't have been up for it.
We are seeing, in America's struggling COVID-19 response, the danger an absentee or incompetent executive can pose.