Trump’s problem isn’t drastic action, it’s lack of vision
No one is taking the crisis more seriously than Mayor David Martin of Stamford and Mayor Harry Rilling of Norwalk, the leaders of the largest Connecticut cities that would be affected by President Donald Trump’s quarantine of the metro New York region.
Martin saw a basketball game in a city park this past week, full-contact 5-on-5. “Within 24 hours I ordered the hoops down,” he told me Saturday, as we tried to make sense of what a quarantine of an 18 million-person region might
look like.
Rilling, too, is quick to order safety measures. “I’ve seen families of five walking into the store together, rather than just sending one person,” he said. I asked: Are you taking action? “We are working on that as we speak,” Rilling said Saturday.
These veteran political leaders, and Gov. Ned Lamont and Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo and many others are more than willing to take drastic action.
Trouble is, when the leader of the nation says, apparently off the top of his head while sending a hospital ship to New York, that he’s seriously considering a 2-week quarantine of the tri-state region, then has no plan and no strategy to achieve it, he causes more problems than he solves.
“I don’t think there’s any clarity there,” Rilling said, in the afternoon’s understatement.
Martin’s response, inside the first hour after reports of Trump’s comments: “Really? We need more tests, we need more ventilators and you’re suggesting this? Really?”
Consider: This is a president who has granted at least nine states “major disaster designations,” but not Connecticut — despite repeated pleas from Lamont. That would lead to higher emergency response.
Got it. So, we don’t have emergency status but we’re part of a regional quarantine, whatever that is, which might or might not happen.
Martin continued: “You think we’re reopening by Easter but you’re putting a quarantine on where I live? Sometimes I don’t understand what side he’s on.”
That was a reference to Trump’s remarks just a few days ago, no more thought out than his quarantine quip, that the nation can get back up and running by Easter. For the record, the Christian observance of Resurrection falls on April 12, exactly two weeks from now — right around the time experts forecast a peak of COVID-19 in New York.
Got it. So, the nation can get back to work just as its largest metro area, nexus of the disease in America, reaches peak crisis. Just so we’re clear.
Lamont’s statement said it well, after — not before, after — a conversation with “high-level” people in the White House about the so-called quarantine.
“Words matter,” Lamont said, “and those words have created a certain amount of confusion and if you lack clarity ... confusion can lead to panic.”
Right about then, my friend who lives in Asia and is decompressing my house for two weeks called and asked if I wanted anything from the drug store — “In case there’s a full quarantine.”
Trump partially clarified that he meant a travel ban in and out of New York for two weeks. He further clarified that he was only talking about “non-commercial” traffic, so commerce wouldn’t be affected.
Got it. A travel ban that won’t affect commerce.
It’s necessary in times of war, and this is certainly war, to work together and rally behind our leaders, starting with Trump. And, to repeat, these state and local leaders are eager to do what it takes.
“Anything that we could do to slow the spread of this virus is something that should be on the table. Anything and everything. And we look for partnerships in the state and federal government,” Rilling said. “I am not against, and I am for, anything that can be implemented to stop people from dying.”
A travel ban might be part of that, Rilling said. He mentioned the Rhode Island National Guard tracking down New Yorkers for quarantine on highways, bus stations and, the
New York Times reported, in coastal communities.
It’s not the drastic action that’s the problem. We’re way past that. It’s the lack of strategy or leadership from Trump.
Unfortunately, we’re stuck. Trump leads only by force of personality and enforced loyalty, not by the rational-legal mindset of modern society.
Speaking of legal issues, Lamont said the White House is looking into what it can and can’t do, legally. Well, that’s reassuring, after Trump’s bombshell remarks. Blogs and Twitter posts, collected by my colleague Meghan Friedmann, show that the federal government gave itself broad powers to order quarantines and travel bans between states in 2017, but that it remains unclear whether that’s enforceable.
This crisis has plenty of plenty of gray area. Lamont’s executive order barring social or recreational gatherings of more than five people, for example, raises questions about what the state can and can’t order.
But at least in that gray area, and in Martin’s Stamford and in Rilling’s Norwalk, we know precisely what the leaders are telling us: Stay home, don’t gather, don’t go out or travel unless you have to, quarantine yourself if you think you’ve been exposed. Here are some orders, but we’re counting on you to make this work.
A casually threatened “quarantine” of the capital of the western world, following a declaration that we’re getting back to business in two weeks, sends precisely the opposite message: I don’t know what I’m telling you, but dammit, I will enforce this order.
This is not a political spat. It’s a general botching a war. To his credit, Martin, a Democrat, after pointing out all that’s not right in this picture, concluded: “If this is the direction he wants to go in, we’ll make it work.”