Prominent statesmen with good reason are today sounding the alarm that the world community is entering a new Cold War. These senior statesmen and respected individuals are correct to be concerned; the world indeed has fallen into an enormous crisis—if not a new Cold War. Today’s crisis is not yet as dangerous as was the Cold War, but it could become so or worse soon. This is an age featuring a fundamental failure of leadership worldwide; the collapse of institutions; the abandonment of the relevance of facts, truth and honesty; the rise of ignorant, incompetent, arrogant, fascistic leaders; a looming climate crisis that may destroy human civilization in a few decades; the erosion of controls over much smaller, but still hugely lethal nuclear-weapon stockpiles; the risk of the rapid weakening of non-proliferation commitments, which could lead to nuclear weapon proliferated worldwide—what John F. Kennedy saw as “the greatest possible danger and hazard;” a virulent viral pandemic and resultant decline in economies throughout the world, all rolled into a vast witches brew threatening humanity.
Cold War solutions such as balance of power, mutually assured destruction, early warning and the balance of terror—the successful tools of the Cold War—have little relevance to today’s crisis. Neither advocacy of rapid action nor commitment to eliminate nuclear weapons on a firm timescale could address a threat with so many parts. But well-educated, experienced, principled leaders dedicated to idealism may be able to see common cause, seek solutions and negotiated structures, and reverse the erosion of democracy through a commitment to rationality, excellence, transparency, scientific excellence, understanding and patience.
Many of today’s leaders have moved to an authoritarian crypto-fascist philosophy—e.g., in Hungary, Turkey, Egypt, India, the Philippines, China, Brazil, North Korea (a special case), the United States, and others. Some of these leaders are also populist in their politics, most notably Trump in the United States and Bolsonaro in Brazil and—although not authoritarian—Boris Johnson in the United Kingdom. The populists are notable for their complete inability to do anything worthwhile with competence.
At this point let us consider an example of such leadership failure in the midst of enormous crisis: the Trump administration’s recent policy toward the pandemic. This administration exhibits many of the ills mentioned above: failure of leadership; abandonment of the relevance of facts, of truth and honesty; the rise of ignorant, incompetent, arrogant, fascistic leaders; refusal to do anything to ameliorate the climate crisis—indeed—acting in ways making it worse; hostility to science; and a laxity about controls over nuclear weapons as demonstrated by rejection of treaties providing such control. President Trump and Kim Jong Un of North Korea, to mention one series of incidents with respect to nuclear weapons, resembled toddlers in a playpen as they argued about who has the biggest nuclear button.
It is worth noting that the three countries in the world least successful in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic are three countries currently led by avowed populist leaders: the United States, Brazil and Great Britain. On July 10, Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke to the European Parliament in connection with Germany’s assumption of the EU Presidency saying in part: “You cannot fight the pandemic with lies and disinformation or with hate and incitement of hatred. The limits of populism are being laid bare.”
And how has the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic gone in the United States? The New York Times reported on June 28 that after weeks of lockdown Americans, pushed by President Trump, began a rapid reopening even though the country needed to stay shut down longer. Many states—mostly with Republican governors—took their foot off the brake as Mr. Trump cheered them on. In addition to ending the shutdown far too soon, experts advised that the states urgently needed to establish a robust system for tracking and containing any new cases—through testing, monitoring and contact tracing. Without such steps the pandemic would just come roaring back. But the precious time gained by the lockdown, with the virus gradually being largely contained, was squandered, and thus the abortive lockdown was a complete failure. On July 3, Michael Gerson wrote in his column titled, “Trump’s infantile conception of strength:” “His (President Trump’s) handling of the COVID-19 pandemic has been lethally incompetent as well as economically ruinous.” There never has been a consistent, reliable federal government policy; everything was pushed off to the governors. The result? Across the country, the approach varied state by state.
Fareed Zakaria noted in his Washington Post column of July 10 “The U.S. must rebuild its government:” “Americans accepted extensive lockdowns far more readily than many predicted. But this period of suffering was meant to buy time for the government to set up systems of testing, tracing and isolation… In truth it squandered this time. Although Trump declared in May, ‘We’ve prevailed on testing,’ his goal of 5 million tests a day, with testing available at every Walmart and CVS, is still just a dream. Most states still don’t have comprehensive testing or contact tracing in place.”
This is what comes from President Trump’s refusal to assume leadership and establish a national policy in one of the great crises in our history. The United States could have beaten the epidemic under sensible, rational leadership—we have the scientific talent to do it. Trump was warned of this risk several times, most recently by the Intelligence Community; months before that by the World Health Organization (from which the U.S. announced its withdrawal on July 9) and by Vice President Biden in January of 2020. Now the United States has, with 4-5% of world population, a quarter of Covid-19 cases and over 130,000 deaths.
To further narrow our focus to just one emblematic issue, consider the wearing of masks, which has been identified by the national health community as an essential public health measure that the United States must adopt. President Trump refused to wear a mask and encouraged his followers to do the same. At the same time Trump required everyone at the White House to wear a mask and be tested every day, his followers made mask-wearing a political act.
As a result of the early end of lockdowns, with an accompanying failure to observe social distancing and unwillingness to wear masks, a wildfire of virus has broken out in the Republican states of Florida, Texas and Arizona and is spreading rapidly to the rest of the country. In Texas, as case numbers of Covid-19 began to soar, Governor Abbott commenced to establish countermeasures, but other state leaders continued to resist any constraints on their freedom of action. As reported in the New York Times on July 5, “Lt. Governor Dan Patrick of Texas declared himself ‘tired’ of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease doctor: ‘I don’t need his advice anymore,” Mr. Patrick said. Comments like the following were heard in restaurants, “It seems like he’s [Governor Abbott] been influenced by Fauci and the left” and in reference to the wearing of masks, “we’re done with all that.”
Kathleen Parker reported in the Washington Post on June 28 from South Carolina: “Leave it to South Carolinians to ignore warnings and urgent suggestions that wearing a mask and physically distancing can drastically reduce the rate of infection. This is Trump country, after all. South Carolina,” Parker reports, “is also home to a not small number of religious charismatics, who believe that the wearing of masks is Satan’s handiwork, designed to block the breath of God. Why there’s talk that even Episcopalians are passing around snakes these days. But seriously, how can officials fight a highly contagious and sometimes deadly disease against such stubborn resistance? Fortunately, the Bible’s authors thought of that too: shame.” Shame can be a powerful and effective weapon for good. It stopped many from smoking cigarettes. Arguably, concludes Parker, “In the new economy of shame the good guys wear masks.”
The following comes from Max Boot in his July 2 Washington Post column, “Welcome to the United States of Idiocy:” “We have an irrational, incompetent president who spent months denying the reality of the disease (remember when he claimed it would ‘miraculously’ go away by April), while suggesting cures including a risky malaria drug and bleach injections. Now President Trump is holding rallies in places such as Tulsa where the disease is surging. Campaign aides even removed signs from the arena urging rally goers to practice social distancing… Republican governors in states like Florida…Texas and Arizona…were slow to declare lockdowns and quick to end them. They also refused to enforce statewide mask mandates—and in the case of Texas and Arizona tried to prevent municipalities from imposing their own more strict rules—even though studies show that wearing masks can reduce transmission by as much as 85 percent.”
Taking their cue from the President, others see masks as the devil’s work. Quoting Max Boot again, “An Ohio state legislator said, ‘I don’t want to cover people’s faces’ because we’re created in the image and likeness of God.’ A Palm Beach, Fla. woman complained that masks ‘throw God’s wonderful breathing system out the door’ while a fellow Palm Beach resident denounced mask advocates for ‘practicing the Devil’s law.’”
How have we reached this pass—where wearing a mask, a modest medical practice that can save many thousands of lives, is denounced by some as the work of the devil? “…we have no one but ourselves to blame. Nobody forced so many Americans to act so recklessly—first by placing their faith in a president who doesn’t deserve it, and now in ignoring widely publicized scientific findings. We are living—and now dying—in an idiocracy of our creation,” concludes Mr. Boot.
Karen Hughes, a former Counsellor to the President and Under Secretary of State in the George W. Bush Administration, asserts in her Washington Post column, “Mask-wearing is a moral issue.” She writes, “I’ve watched in alarm and dismay as the course of action recommended by all our nation’s infectious-disease experts has been shunned by many of my fellow conservatives and Republicans. President Trump, Vice President Pence and many governors either refuse to wear a mask or wear one only occasionally sending inconsistent messages about the importance of wearing masks even as COVID-19 spreads at record levels.
“…Wearing a mask is not about protecting you; it protects others from the possibility that you are exhaling virus particles at them. A recent University of Washington study projected that 30,000 fewer people will die by October if 95% of us wear masks in public.
“… Like too much else in our country, this issue has been politicized, egged on by a president whose inexplicable refusal to wear a mask sets a terrible example. Unfortunately, his actions gave cover for too many Republican governors to bow to the strident voices opposed to government restrictions on personal liberty, rather than calling on all of us to act on our personal responsibility to protect others.
“While wearing a mask is not a political issue, it is a moral one. The choice and stakes are clear; the minor inconvenience of donning a mask vs. potentially threatening other people’s lives, the options are not equal on any scale of duty, honor, citizenship, or service to God and others. Amid a deadly virus pandemic, wearing a mask is the only responsible course of action.”
And, a comment on the President’s actions from Steve Schmidt, lifelong Republican, aide to Senator Lamar Alexander and the Campaign Manager for John McCain in the 2008 presidential campaign. “Donald Trump has been the worst president this country has ever had. And I don’t say that hyperbolically. He is. But he is a consequential president. And he has brought this country in three short years to a place of weakness that is simply unimaginable if you were pondering where we are today from the day where Barack Obama left office. And there were a lot of us on that day who were deeply skeptical and very worried about what a Trump presidency would be. But this is a moment of unparalleled national humiliation, of weakness.
“When you listen to the President, these are the musings of an imbecile. An idiot. And I don’t use those words to name call. I use them because they are the precise words of the English language to describe his behavior. His comportment. His actions. We’ve never seen a level of incompetence, a level of ineptitude so staggering on a daily basis by anybody in the history of the country who’s ever been charged with substantial responsibilities.
“It’s just astonishing that this man is president of the United States. The man, the con man, from New York City. Many bankruptcies, failed businesses, a reality show, that branded him as something that he never was. A successful businessman. Well, he’s the President of the United States now, and the man who said he would make the country great again. And he’s brought death, suffering, and economic collapse on truly an epic scale. And let’s be clear. This isn’t happening in every country around the world. This place. Our place. Our home. Our country. The United States. We are the epicenter. We are the place where you’re the most likely to die from this disease. We’re the ones with the most shattered economy. And we are because of the fool that sits in the Oval Office behind the Resolute Desk.”
Finally, a first and last word—simple and straightforward—from a Founder:
“The national cure for an ill administration in a popular or representative constitution is a change of men.” — Alexander Hamilton, 1788
John Jay