Admitting mistakes shouldn’t be wrong step
For all of the rending of our social fabric over the past eight years in the United States, nothing has been more bitterly polarizing than our public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Faced with a fast-spreading virus and the potential of millions of American deaths, public health officials and politicians accelerated the development of vaccines and implemented lockdowns on businesses, schools and communities in an attempt to slow the spread of the disease and to save lives.
Now, Dr. Francis Collins, former director of the National Institutes of Health, has been publicly reflecting on the mistakes made by the public health establishment during the pandemic. In doing so, he has unintentionally highlighted a challenge for those who seek to rebuild trust among the American people and between the American people and their leaders: the penalty we pay for humility.
I have a professional connection to this story as national ambassador for Braver Angels, America’s largest crosspartisan, grassroots organization dedicated to the work of bridging political depolarization. (That’s a fancy way of saying we are liberals, conservatives and others working toward rebuilding trust among the American people and the people and their institutions.)
‘Very narrow view of what the right decision is’
In 2022, Braver Angels was put in touch with Collins because of his desire to engage constructively with critics of our public health response to the pandemic. Collins wanted to get to know ordinary Americans to better understand why so much of the public had lost faith in our public health institutions.
Braver Angels has a program dedicated to uplifting the voices of workingclass Americans in our democratic discourse called the We The People’s Project, led in part by political podcaster Adam “Wilk” Wilkinson, a logistics and transportation manager in Clearwater, Minnesota.
Wilkinson, who was a supporter of former President Donald Trump and a critic of the pandemic lockdown policies, also is a passionate believer in healing our divides.
My colleagues approached Wilkinson about serving as a bridge between Dr. Collins and the many Braver Angels members who felt that the former NIH director had perpetrated a vast injustice against the American people.
Wilkinson and Collins then began working together to produce online and in-person events that culminated with the doctor’s appearance at Braver Angels’ national convention last year.
While Collins was met with intense criticism at the convention, his willingness to step forward and hear the voices of dissenters was well received, even by those who disagreed with him.
Recently, however, a clip from the doctor’s conversation with Wilkinson at the convention has led to a new avalanche of contempt for Collins.
Here are some of Collins’ now viral comments: “As a guy living inside the Beltway, feeling the sense of crisis, trying to decide what to do in some situation room in the White House … we weren’t really thinking about what that would mean to Wilk and his family in Minnesota, a thousand miles away from where the virus was hitting so hard. We weren’t really considering the consequences in communities that were not New York City or some other big city.
“If you’re a public health person and you’re trying to make a decision, you have this very narrow view of what the right decision is, and that is something that will save a life. Doesn’t matter what else happens. … You attach zero value to whether this actually totally disrupts people’s lives, ruins the economy, and has many kids kept out of school in a way that they never quite recover from.”
Some of Collins’ critics took that admission as an opportunity to pile on.
A new wave of criticism crested on social media, and National Review and The Wall Street Journal published critical commentary.
The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board wrote: “This was precisely the argument we made on March 20, 2020 … for politicians not to accept the lockdown advice of public-health officials as gospel. They think too narrowly, and political leaders have to consider the larger consequences of policies for the public good.”
I have no problem with such criticism, and in fact, agree with it. I was among the many Americans who, as the lockdowns continued for months, became frustrated at the inattention paid to the secondary effects of such policies. Put aside concerns for civil liberties. What would it mean for public health itself for millions of Americans to find themselves unemployed, socially isolated, fearful and stuck at home for extended periods of time?
But if Collins and his peers can be criticized for having thought too narrowly about the consequences of our public response to the pandemic, the doctor’s critics also can be criticized for thinking too narrowly about the consequences of brushing aside his act of contrition.
Humility from leading public officials is the rarest of commodities, but it is needed more than ever in our current political culture.
Former President Donald Trump more than any politician in recent memory has built a brand out of never apologizing or conceding mistakes. But many other elected officials and public authorities tend not to reflect on their shortcomings.
Neither, for that matter, do many activists and pundits. Certainty is the currency of the realm, it seems. To admit fault is to betray weakness that people in public life feel they can’t afford.
Yet, if we can’t admit mistakes, then there can be no culture of reflection in our politics. And without a culture of reflection, it means we won’t learn from our mistakes. Nor can we trust one another (or our leaders) to do so.
That approach locks us into the pattern we find ourselves in now. When politicians and public figures from each end of our political duopoly do and say things that are destructive, they feel compelled to double down on the same course out of fear of the consequences of admitting they were wrong.
Applaud the precedent that Dr. Francis Collins set
Media outlets that played up the racial sensitivities of the American people can’t acknowledge their role in fomenting the outrage that led to riots in 2020.
Other outlets trafficking in rage and conspiracy can’t own their perpetuation of false claims that the presidential election was stolen.
Universities are too slow to admit that inconsistencies in their free speech protections have made it possible for certain groups to be made to feel vulnerable on campus.
Politicians who now decry the threat of Russia pretend as if they didn’t laugh at the notion that Russia was a threat to global security only a few years ago. The list goes on and on.
Francis Collins took a meaningful step with public reflection on the consequences of his leadership during one of the most difficult periods of recent American history. His willingness to do so should not exempt him from criticism or accountability. But critics must at least be willing to applaud the precedent that Collins set in offering such statements if we are to hope that more public figures will not only acknowledge their mistakes, but also help us all learn how we can do better in the future.
As a nation, we need humility and graciousness to replace arrogance and stubbornness so that that we can begin to make progress together again.
John Wood Jr. is a columnist for USA TODAY Opinion. He is national ambassador for Braver Angels, a former nominee for Congress, former vice chairman of the Republican Party of Los Angeles County, musical artist, and a noted writer and speaker on subjects including racial and political reconciliation. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter: @JohnRWoodJr.