A deadly pattern of failed leadership
Abbott’s cave-in on masks is one in a long series of missteps — including the power outage.
Even in a state that celebrates limited government, most Texans can agree to this much: Gov. Greg Abbott’s top duty is to protect Texans’ lives, and at the very least, do nothing to put them in harm’s way. He has woefully failed.
The governor blindsided the medical community, business leaders and millions of Texans in his decision to drop all state restrictions on Wednesday that had been aimed at slowing the spread of the deadly novel coronavirus. While the desire to allow struggling businesses to open fully is understandable on some level, there can be only one motivation for dropping the simple, commonsense requirement that we all wear face masks: the governor is putting politics over people’s lives.
Such recklessness in the service of political expediency has become a pattern for Abbott. His cynical calculations, and the deaths they cause, will define his legacy.
In his latest move, Abbott may be hoping to distract Texans from his equally failed leadership regarding the catastrophic collapse of the state power grid during last month’s deadly winter freeze.
Voters must not allow the diversionary tactic to work. Abbott’s failures related to the power crisis cost lives — dozens and counting — and so will this week’s decision to toss out the only meager tools local leaders had to require Texans to protect each other from a virus that has already killed more than 500,000 Americans and roughly 44,000 Texans. There’s no doubt that some, perhaps many, lives would have been spared had Abbott simply waited a month or two before easing restrictions.
Did Abbott even ask any medical experts to model how many deaths could result? If so, did he deem the losses justified if they would score him temporary political points with Republican voters who have come to equate cloth face coverings with tyranny?
The calculation is beyond chilling. At his press conference in Lubbock last week, Abbott crowed about the state’s reopening like he were announcing a new corporate relocation. A small friendly crowd even cheered him on. All the while, he was completely aware of the facts and the science even as he turned his back on them. Deaths and cases are still increasing in Texas. All five worrying new variants are present in Houston, including one against which the vaccines have proven much less effective. Texas ranks near the bottom in the nation for per-capita vaccinations.
Abbott’s pandemic announcement — modeled after Florida’s months’ long foolishness and mirrored this week by Mississippi — was just the latest in a cynical pattern that has been on full display ever since Valentine’s Day brought ice, ruin and woe.
There was no single cause for the failure of Texas’ power grid, but there was one leader at the top who failed his leadership test before, during and after one of the biggest crises in Texas history.
Before the crisis
Yes, Abbott declared an emergency in all 254 Texas counties and tweeted about the impending freeze before Winter Storm Uri hit. But weather wasn’t the worst threat; it was Texas’ ill-equipped infrastructure — especially its deregulated electric grid. Other states manage to face down unexpected, even extreme weather without coming within “minutes or seconds” of a complete blackout that officials at the state’s nonprofit grid manager ERCOT conceded would have kept Texans in the cold and dark for weeks
or months.
Abbott wasn’t at the ERCOT controls during the storm, but as Texas’ top executive he is accountable in important ways. Witnesses testified to lawmakers that the governor lacked urgency in alerting Texans of the storm’s magnitude, which first-term Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo aptly described as Category 5 hurricane conditions.
Abbott alone appoints members of the Public Utility Commission, who oversee ERCOT and were apparently adhering to his lax oversight philosophy in November when they fired the independent nonprofit firm that had for years monitored energy providers’ compliance with state guidelines, including weatherization efforts designed to protect energy infrastructure from failures during extreme cold. As though that weren’t enough, they also oversaw the gutting of the PUC’s enforcement division.
All this while Texas, along with the rest of the world, is enduring more frequent bounds with extreme weather of all kinds due to climate change. Did Abbott order his PUC appointees to get ready? The answer was blowing in the icy wind that froze well heads, power plants and wind turbines.
During the crisis
When things turned deadly during the early days of the storm, Abbott lashed out — not at himself, or his handpicked appointees — but, initially, at private companies that had failed to voluntarily do what the state had refused to demand of them: to prepare for the extreme cold.
He quickly pivoted to blame ERCOT, an easy target since it was so little known. Sure, ERCOT appears to have made mistakes in communication and other areas. But the CEO’s forced departure and the PUC chairwoman’s resignation don’t address Abbott’s failures.
After the crisis
As the lights came back on, and boil water advisories began to expire, Texans emerged from their homes to face the wreckage: busted pipes, astronomical electric bills, and for the least fortunate, hospital visits and funerals.
Abbott made one good suggestion to address a technical cause of the calamity: calling on lawmakers to require energy infrastructure be winterized. Then he quickly returned to form: blaming others, and even peddling the ridiculously false narrative on Fox News that wind turbines were largely to blame for the power grid’s failure.
To date, the governor of Texas has offered no mea culpas about his own role, nor encouraged a re-evaluation of Texas’ excessively light regulatory oversight.
And because he hasn’t learned that lesson, Texas may be doomed to repeat it — just as we are doomed to repeat the grave loss of life that followed Abbott’s disastrous reopening last spring.
This time, the terrible irony is that we’re so close to the end of this nightmare. Abbott is fumbling on the other side’s 10-yard line, and yet declaring victory. It’s heartbreaking.
“If we can just hang on to the summer, we are going to vaccinate our way out of this,” vaccine expert Dr. Peter Hotez told the editorial board Wednesday. “So, I don’t understand the need to rip off the mask and social distancing requirements.”
If only we had one more month, Hotez said.
If only. But waiting one month would have required political sacrifice, prioritizing the greater good — in short, something we haven’t seen from Abbott during this deadly pandemic or the deadly winter storm: leadership.