San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
A year lost and an era ended
Aquartercentury ago, a Democratic president declared that the era of big government was over. Last week, another Democratic president — one who has been in Washington long enough to have applauded that line from Bill Clinton’s 1996 State of the Union address — signed a $1.9 trillion package of pandemic relief and individual, family and government assistance, affirming that the era of big government being over is itself over. That this first legislative mission statement of the Biden presidency coincided with the anniversary of the coronavirusdriven economic shutdowns was not just a coincidence.
Former President Donald Trump did less than Clinton and most other presidents to actually shrink the federal government, having dramatically increased the national debt even before the pandemic. But he did conduct the most thorough and conclusive test of the lunatic proposition that the federal government is not particularly necessary. And he did so just when we needed it most: in the teeth of a deadly, onceinacentury pandemic.
A year later, thanks to the horrific human and material cost of that abdication, Biden and his fellow Democrats have a mandate to provide robust federal leadership that, at least beyond the Beltway, transcends partisanship: Polls show as much as threequarters of the public supports their extraordinarily antipoverty and progovernment legislation, including between 40% and 60% of Republicans; no wonder the president hastened to sign the bill as soon as it arrived at the White House, a day earlier than expected. The pandemic era isn’t over yet, but it has already ended the era of pretending that the era of big government is over.
For all the disingenuous assertions that achieving natural herd immunity was ever a viable answer to the pandemic, the virus’ arrival in California and across the country presented a stark choice in March 2020: Shut down much of the economy or accept an incalculable toll. A year ago this week, the Bay Area’s often fractious officials united across the region to lead California and much of the country in making the difficult but correct choice. San Francisco, which has been the most conservative in reopening, has since suffered less than a third of the average deaths per capita nationwide.
But getting beyond the blunt and ultimately destructive instrument of broadly ceasing economic and other activities to save lives would require government intervention on a massive scale. Businesses and workers needed assistance at levels beyond the capacity of the states to provide; indeed, state and local governments themselves required shoring up. Protective equipment, diagnostic tests and ultimately vaccines had to be developed, produced and distributed nationwide. California and other states struggled to fill the void left by the Trump administration and succumbed to the temptation to reopen too quickly, leading to more disease and death. Even now, with the latest and worst deadly surge ebbing and vaccinations increasing, Gov. Gavin Newsom is authorizing another rush toward normality that could set off a fourth wave of infections.
Americans have lost lives, livelihoods and much of a year of living to the pandemic. We played parent, teacher and employee simultaneously or went to essential jobs at the risk of our health and that of our families. We endured fear and isolation; we wore our masks and washed our hands. Too much of this effort, hardship and sacrifice was squandered.
A year later, the Bay Area has suffered significantly fewer deaths per capita than most of California, which in turn has fared slightly better than the national average, but that is in the context of one of the world’s most devastated countries. The United States has lost more lives to the pandemic than any other country, about a fifth of worldwide deaths sustained by less than a twentieth of the global population, ranking it among the 10 worst national tolls per capita. We’ve suffered nearly twice the proportionate losses of Germany, four times those of Denmark and 40 times Australia’s.
For that we can blame an administration that abdicated most of its responsibility to respond to the pandemic, a Congress that was paralyzed for much of it, and the states and localities that failed, struggled or only incrementally managed to fill the void. After a year of national devastation, the era of nongovernment is over.