Recklessness has cost the president and the people
Even before President Donald Trump revealed he and first lady Melania Trump had contracted the novel coronavirus, this was already one of the most tumultuous and chaotic years in U.S. history.
Think of how much we have gone through since Jan. 1: The third impeachment trial in U.S. history. The most deadly epidemic in a century. The worst economic collapse since the Great Depression. The largest protests in our history. The death of Supreme Court
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And, of course, the daily drumbeat of revelations about a president who makes more news in a day than his predecessors did in a month. Just this week, we have been transfixed by news of Trump’s tax avoidance and his debate meltdown. Now this. We have coped with presidential infirmity before. Even leaving aside assassination and attempted assassination (four sitting presidents were shot to death; one was seriously wounded), there has been Dwight D. Eisenhower’s heart attack and stroke; John F. Kennedy’s Addison’s disease; Franklin D. Roosevelt’s congestive heart failure; Warren Harding’s heart attack; Woodrow Wilson’s influenza and strokes; Zachary Taylor’s cholera; William Henry Harrison’s pneumonia; and that’s only a partial list. But each time has been a national crisis, whether we knew it at the time or not.
In most cases, the White House tried to conceal information about the president’s true condition. After Eisenhower had his first heart attack in 1955, reporters were told he had suffered from “a digestive upset during the night.” Given that Trump tells the truth less than any of his predecessors, that should make us cautious about accepting on faith anything this White House says about his condition.
Many of those previous presidential maladies changed history, and this one could be no exception. Imagine what would have happened if FDR, already badly ailing when he ran his third reelection campaign in 1944, had not replaced the pro-Soviet Henry A. Wallace with the anti-Communist Harry Truman as vice president. It is hard to imagine Wallace implementing the policies of containment and deterrence that ultimately won the Cold War.
Or imagine if Wilson had not contracted the flu in April 1919 when he was attending the Paris Peace Conference after World War I. He became so exhausted and disoriented that he conceded to French demands, which he had previously resisted, for imposing a heavy reparations bill on Germany. Wilson recovered from the flu but then suffered a stroke Oct. 2, 1919, which left him incapacitated for the remainder of his term. That made him unable to negotiate a compromise with Senate
Republicans that might have led to ratification of the Treaty of Versailles and American participation in the League of Nations. The harsh treatment of Germany and U.S. isolationism after World War I set the stage for World War II.
No one could have predicted the impact of Wilson’s or Roosevelt’s illnesses, which were closely guarded secrets, and it is no different with Trump. It is possible that his popularity might rise because of the kind of public sympathy that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson received after he, too, contracted the coronavirus. But it is equally possible that this diagnosis will cripple Trump’s already failing reelection campaign by shining a harsh spotlight on his indifference to a pandemic that has ravaged the United States.
The president deserves our sympathy and best wishes for a speedy recovery — but he cannot, and will not, escape judgment for his failure to treat the coronavirus with the gravity and urgency that it deserves. On Sept. 21, he told an Ohio rally that COVID-19 “affects virtually nobody.” At Tuesday’s presidential debate, he said of Joe Biden, “I don’t wear masks like him.” Even on Thursday, shortly before he was diagnosed, Trump said that “the end of the pandemic is in sight.”
Trump’s actions were as dangerous as his words. He continued to hold rallies, sometimes indoors, at which many attendees did not wear masks. Incredibly, he attended an indoor event in New Jersey on Thursday after his aide Hope Hicks tested positive. Few White House staffers wear masks, because the president frowns upon them. Even the president’s diagnosis did not change this reckless behavior. At the presidential debate, Trump’s family disregarded the rules by refusing to don masks, putting everyone in danger — including Joe Biden and Jill Biden.
Trump seemed to base his whole reelection campaign on the pretense that the coronavirus was magically going to disappear. Now he has been reminded, in the most awful way possible, that the threat is not going away anytime soon. Not even all of the resources of the White House could keep him safe. How much greater is the danger to the rest of the country?
History makes clear that presidential illness is a national security issue. The stock market drop on Friday morning was more evidence, if any were needed, of the stakes involved. By endangering himself, Trump has put the whole country at risk. His diagnosis only heightens the global perception of the United States as a pitiful pariah that can’t do anything right.
Pray for him — and for us.
Max Boot is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a global a≠airs analyst for CNN.