Presidential performance and ultimate merit are often measured by the quality of a president’s management of crisis. The pandemic currently ravaging America—the part that responded to Trump’s reckless encouragement to ignore basic rules of public health—shows no sign of abating. New York at the commencement of this crisis was the single hardest hit of any place in the world because—contrary to President Trump’s assertion that the virus arrived from China—the virus arrived in this country in strength from Europe. But through the vigorous adoption and enforcement of the relevant public health rules, Governor Cuomo has led New York from a very high peak of infection and death to near zero. Likewise the European Union was also ravaged by the virus but its COVID-19 profile rises to a peak and then falls to its current very low level.
By contrast the profile for COVID-19 in the United States as a whole rises to a high peak and stays there—despite the heroics displayed and maintained in New York State. The New York disease level is not far from zero, in the European Union it is in the range of 4,000 new cases per day and in the United States as a whole it remains at 20-25,000 new infections every day and approximately 120,000 deaths with 200,000 predicted by the first of October. On May 21, Germany with 83 million people had 178,000 cases and 8,000 deaths; South Korea with 50 million had 11,000 cases and 264 deaths the United States with 330 million people had one and a half million cases and 93,000 deaths. By June 18 the case number in the U.S. was about two million, one hundred and sixty thousand and as said, a death count just short of 120,000.
Throughout Trump’s performance has been reckless and irresponsible in the extreme. He, at the beginning, with doctors and scientists clamoring for action, constantly belittled the approach of a world-wide health crisis in order to keep stock prices high. Traveling in India in February he was asked about the pandemic and claimed that the U.S. had this crisis “very much under control” and that “the situation will start working itself out.” He added shortly thereafter, “stock market starting to look very good to me.” And then finally when he allowed public health rules to be put in place in late March and the pandemic began to slow after sadly many lives needlessly had been lost, the economy and the stock market crashed. After a week or two Trump was agitating for a reopening.
When his call for reopening began—contrary to scientific advice—toward the end of April, the White House released a plan, developed by scientists and medical experts, how this could be done in the safest possible way. Immediately Trump was on Twitter undermining his “own” plan, electronically screaming: “LIBERATE MINNESOTA,” “LIBERATE MICHIGAN,” “LIBERATE VIRGINIA and save your great 2nd Amendment, it is under siege” and encouraged armed mobs to threaten and terrorize these three Democrat governed states until, after holding out a long time and attempting to follow scientific advice finally began to open. It wasn’t long before the virus came roaring back in those states that followed Trump’s advice and reopened rapidly paying no heed to public health rules. Meanwhile for months, Trump was on television during the weekly briefing by the White House Coronavirus Task Force, touting a miracle cure for COVID-19. This so-called cure was an anti-malarial medicine which in a few weeks was declared by the Food and Drug too dangerous for COVID-19 patients to take and likely to lead to additional deaths. He topped this performance with a statement at a subsequent Task Force briefing that COVID-19 patients could eliminate the virus in their lungs by consuming bleach or disinfectants such as Lysol or Clorox. A public outcry followed this. The manufacturers of these chemicals urged the public not to consume their products internally. This turned out to be literally a showstopper as Trump terminated the Task Force because of this embarrassment. The next step for Trump was to schedule his first presidential election rally since March in Tulsa in late June in one of the new hotspots of the pandemic, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Local health officials pleaded with the Campaign for delay. The pleas were of course ignored. Nearly 40,000 people were expected, 19,000 tightly packed inside a large auditorium and an equal number outside. There would be no social distancing and the wearing of masks was optional. This would be virtually certain to add to the infection and death rates. After all the hype, the President was disappointed by the turnout, the auditorium was only 2/3rds full and there were no supporters outside. But the public health threat remained.
As Michael Gerson said in his column in the Washington Post on June 19th entitled “A failure without peer”: “Trump has been permanently marked by failure…what other president would have played down the advance of a global health crisis to keep stock prices inflated?…What other president would have led populist resistance to public health measures as the coronavirus pandemic continued to spread?…and he chose—amazingly, alarmingly—to equate essential health measures with gun confiscation. I can think of no presidential precedent. It is unique in its recklessness.” Not only has this president been the least competent, the most destructive and reckless of any who have sat in the oval office, he is the worst president that one could possibly imagine in their wildest dreams.
The Founders would have made short work of this.
“The natural cure for an ill administration in a popular or representative constitution is a change of men.” — Alexander Hamilton 1787
“If there be a principle that ought not to be questioned within the United States, it is that every man has a right to abolish an old government and establish a new one. This principle is not only recorded in every public archive, written in every American heart, and sealed with the blood of American martyrs, but is also the only lawful tenure by which the United States hold their existence as a nation.” — James Madison 1793
John Jay