By Brigitte L. Nacos
As Americans fear for their own and their family members’ physical, mental, and economic survival and look to the President and the White House to manage the existential Covid-19 crisis with competence and empathy, they do not find what they need in Donald Trump and his administration’s disaster response. The President denies any responsibility for his failure to speed up disaster preparedness when he was well aware of this new global killer virus and effective response measures when he could no longer deny the lethal threat of the virus right here in our country.
Instead of using his overlong televised press conferences to unite the polarized nation, Mr. Trump conducts them like campaign rallies full of narcissistic self-aggrandizement and bomb-throwing against reporters asking “nasty” questions and governors pleading for more federal disaster help in order to save the lives of Americans.
In the “Afterword” of the paperback edition of his book “Time to Get Tough” Trump wrote,
“A great leader can bring America together. But unfortunately for us, Barack Obama is not a leader. So who can the country turn to?”
This was published in 2015, the pre-primary time, when he obviously figured he would be the president who would bring unity to this country. Yet, in more than three years at the helm he has not united Americans. Indeed, he has magnified partisan and ideological polarization. That’s why there is no strong rally-‘round-the-president effect at the height of this deadly crisis.
In serious, national emergencies a president is not supposed to “backup” governors of the individual states as the President claimed yesterday in a repeat of similar statement. No, when disasters strike, the President is the one who must lead and become the crisis manager-in-chief. This is the time when he has to provide consistent and factual information as well as assure and console a scared and suffering nation.
In his book “Presidential Character” James Barber argues that character, the core of personality, determines how “the President orients himself toward life-not for the moment, but enduringly." Obviously, this is not a character trait of this president. In “The Art of the Deal” Trump wrote,
“Most people are surprised by the way I work. I play it very loose. …You can’t be entrepreneurial if you’ve too much structure. I prefer to come to work each day and just see what develops”
This self-described attention to the moment—not the larger context—explains why this attention-challenged president changes his positions again and again and creates confusion. In the same book, he reveals, “I try to learn from the past, but I plan for the future by focusing exclusively on the present.” Exclusively focusing on the present--that’s the problem with this presidency and one of the major reasons for its failure.
There is no interest in the institutional memory and the professional expertise of civil servants—not even when it comes to responding to disaster. Key positions in the executive branch, and especially in agencies charged with emergency preparedness are held by political appointees without expertise in the areas they are supposed to guide. They did carry out their most important mission, namely, to reject and erase what previous presidents and their administrations left behind—including, extensive preparedness protocols for global pandemics that many scientists predicted for years.
During the 2016 Obama-Trump transition, officials from both sides got together for a pandemic table exercise that assumed the possibility or even likelihood of such a global disaster striking within the next few years.
Instead of continuing the work of the previous administration, the Global Health Security Office in the National Security Council was dismantled during John Bolton’s tenure as National Security Advisor. Although Trump claimed in one of his press events that he knew nothing about this, his underlings knew then and know now that he wants everything erased that has a link to his predecessor.
But the President and his White House crew ignored also a warning of lacking preparedness for a killer virus pandemic by their own administration.
In 2019 the Department of Health and Human Services presided over an eight-month exercise titled “Crimson Contagion” with participant in several U.S. states. The assumption was the following:
Outbreak of respiratory virus starting in China spreads around the world. In the U.S. Chicago has the first cases; 47 days later WGO declares pandemic. 110 million people in the U.S. expected to get sick; 7.7 million hospitalized; 586,000 deaths.
Even though in that assumed outbreak, a vaccine was available, the findings in the draft report was shocking:
U.S. lacks the ability to produce sufficient quantities of vaccine (which was supposed to be effective and in smaller quantities available).
Global capacity will also be incapable to meet domestic demands for medical countermeasures, including, Personal protective equipment and supplies, Limited availability of needles, syringes, N95 respirators, ventilators, and other medical supplies which are difficult to restock because they are often manufactured overseas.
States encountered multiple challenges requesting resources from the federal government.
Obviously, this extensive report and its alerts to insufficient preparedness for a pandemic was not a call to action before and after President Trump learned of the Copid-19 outbreak in China. Otherwise, they would have immediately acted to get more medical equipment produced and otherwise secured.
Unlike Harry Truman and other predecessors President Trump does not accept that “The buck stops here.”
That’s the symptom of a failed presidency.
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