A ‘wartime president’ in retreat
President Trump recently cast himself as a “wartime president” leading the nation’s battle against the coronavirus pandemic. If one follows that analogy, he is drawing up our surrender. Trump may well be comparable to a wartime leader given the scope and seriousness of the crisis he faces, but his response to the occasion so far has been more Chamberlain than Churchill. He appears to be quickly giving up on an already belated and halfhearted effort to muster a concerted national response to the contagion. After not quite a week of straining to abide by the consensus of public health experts and encourage widespread social distancing, he is reverting to his earlier strategy of doubting and downplaying the threat.
Even with countless lives in the balance, the president’s proximate concern is, not surprisingly, himself. Having foolishly claimed credit for every upward tick of the Dow Jones industrial average, he has now watched it plummet into bear territory amid worries about the economic consequences of the pandemic and of the measures California and other states have taken to slow its spread.
“WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF,” Trump tweeted in a palpable capslock panic Sunday, promising to reassess his coronavirus task force’s guidance against unnecessary gatherings. He went further Tuesday in a Fox News appearance, saying he wants “the country opened up and raring to go by Easter,” just over two weeks hence — to which Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden articulated the most fitting response: “What’s he talking about?”
The president’s readiness to retreat is especially disconcerting given that his administration has not exactly led the charge against the pandemic. Federal guidance was so slow in coming that Bay Area officials, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and other state and local leaders leaped ahead of the White House in discouraging gatherings and ultimately issuing shelterinplace orders.
The best available evidence and expertise indicates that the entire country should be moving in California’s direction, which stands a chance of enabling the health care system to handle a surge of seriously ill patients. And yet Trump is eager to cut and run the other way.
He was shrugging at the danger while the rest of the world shuddered: The International Olympic Committee postponed the Summer Games in Tokyo, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared a threeweek “lockdown” affecting some 1.3 billion, and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said his state needs 30,000 more ventilators to handle an outbreak that is doubling in size every few days.
But the president remains impervious to the facts persuading officials around the country and globe that the lives at stake outweigh the economic losses — which can, after all, be reversed. It’s no wonder Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the administration’s foremost voice of reason on the pandemic, has receded from White House briefings after sitting for a series of frank interviews.
Given Trump’s preoccupation with his reelection prospects, he should reconsider his chosen course for his own good, if not that of his fellow Americans. Unprecedented stimulus measures like those being debated in Congress are the appropriate response to the economic ravages the country will suffer. But if the administration rashly forsakes public health for shortterm gains and presides over a plague like Italy’s, it won’t be good for the president’s polls. His future depends on saving lives, not stocks.