Help wanted: President who will lead with honesty

Looking at America and the world today, it is easy to see the COVID-19 pandemic, the economic dislocations from it, the raging forest fires in the western United States, and the devastating hurricanes ravaging America’s Gulf coast (the bitter fruit of climate change) and sink into despair. I think, however, of my late parents’ generation —— the greatest generation — and how America got through both the Great Depression and World War II, and I think that somehow we, too, can pull through.

In February, 1942, America was emerging from a decade of the Great Depression, saw Hitler’s Germany coming close to total victory in Europe, and suffered the loss of a significant part of the U.S. Pacific fleet on Dec. 7, 1941 at Pearl Harbor. Imperial Japan was inflicting defeat after defeat upon the U.S. and Britain in the Far East and Britain was hanging by its fingernails at home. President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed the American people by radio (with his radio addresses being nicknamed “Fireside Chats”). He told his speechwriter, “I want to explain to the people something about geography — what our problem is and what the overall strategy of the war has to be. … If they understand the problem and what we are driving at, I am sure that they can take any kind of bad news right on the chin.” FDR told the American people, “Never before have we had so little time in which to do so much.”

The American people listened, took the bad news and responded, both with those fighting abroad, and Americans sacrificing on the home front with rationing and other hardships. It took not months, but years of sacrifice, but the American people and America’s allies prevailed.

Fast-forward to this year. On Feb. 7 President Trump told Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward that the COVID-19 virus was more deadly than the flu and easily transmitted. He could easily have used FDR’s words in speaking to the public, “Never before have we had so little time in which to do so much.” He didn’t. He downplayed the virus. He said that it will disappear soon. He said that it was like the flu. He downplayed the importance of testing.

Meanwhile, Trump admitted to Woodward that he was deliberately downplaying the virus so as to not panic Americans. Meanwhile, Trump contradicted his medical experts on the need to wear masks and social distance. He contradicted cautious governors and mocked them. He later encouraged campaign events where masks and social distancing were almost nonexistent. And when Trump himself was infected with

COVID-19, he received treatment that was not available to most Americans and told Americans not to be afraid of the virus as the death toll climbed above

215,000.

Americans can take bad news, can sacrifice for the common good, and can overcome the crisis of pandemic and climate change. To do so, we need leadership.

Trump has failed America. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won’t. Please join me in supporting them.