Trump not planning to seek advice from past presidents
WASHINGTON — President George W. Bush turned to one of the world’s most exclusive clubs for help in raising money after an Indian Ocean tsunami killed more than 200,000 people in 2004.
He paired his father, George H.W. Bush, and the man who defeated him to win the presidency in 1992, Bill Clinton. It worked so well that he signed up the duo again after Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans less than a year later.
President Barack Obama followed the same playbook and sent Clinton and the younger Bush on a fundraising effort for Haiti after a devastating earthquake in 2010.
Not President Donald Trump, who has no plans to seek his predecessors’ counsel during the coronavirus pandemic.
“No, not really,” Trump said recently when asked if he would contact any of the living former presidents. “We’re doing a great job.”
Even in the face of the greatest challenge of his presidency, Trump has expressed confidence in his team and said he didn’t want to “bother” the former presidents. He added that he would reach out if he thought he could learn from them.
Instead, he has frequently criticized his predecessors, disparaging Obama’s handling of the H1N1 virus pandemic of 20092010 that killed nearly 12,500 Americans, and George W. Bush’s response to atrina, in which more than 1,800 people were killed, mostly in New Orleans.
“Look, I respect everybody, but I feel I have an incredible team and I think we’re doing an incredible job,” Trump said at the White House. “So I don’t want to disturb them, bother them. I don’t think I’m going to learn much. I guess you could say that there’s probably a natural inclination not to call.
“Now, if I felt that if I called I’d learn something and that would save one life — it would save one life, OK? — I would make the call in two minutes. But I don’t see that happening.”
That hasn’t stopped Clinton, Bush and Obama from getting involved in their own ways.
Obama has become more of a presence on social media during the pandemic, posting health and safety tips from public officials, news reports and uplifting accounts of the ways Americans are coming together during the crisis.
Bush hosted a teleconference this month with more than 500 mayors and local leaders who are working to keep their communities from being overrun by the virus. He is also using the Bush Institute to highlight how people across the country are helping each other, Bush spokesman Freddy Ford said in an email.
Bush and former first lady Laura Bush are also social distancing “to the max” at their ranch in Crawford, Texas, Ford said.
Bill and Hillary Clinton recently sent hundreds of pizzas to hospitals in Westchester County, New York, where they live.
Presidents seeking help from those who came before them isn’t a modern phenomenon.
In the late 1940s, Harry Truman put former President Herbert Hoover in charge of a commission charged with streamlining the executive branch of government.
John F. Kennedy sought feedback from former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had been an Army general, after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961.
Jimmy Carter led a Clinton-sanctioned mission to North Korea in 1994.
“Former presidents are a rarity and they are a precious, valuable informed commodity,” said Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. And it’s not only because they know issues, “but they also have the experience of being president.”
Jeffrey Engel, director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, said the fact that Trump doesn’t “go outside of his own info bubble” to seek advice is perhaps among the biggest problems of his presidency.
“You don’t know the information that you don’t know,” Engel said.