This piece will be appearing in newspapers in my very red congressional district (VA-06).
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Not so long ago, as it first became evident that the coronavirus was going to deal a blow to the American economy, I thought: Wouldn’t it be ironic if Trump were to lose his re-election bid because people blamed him for an economic downturn that wasn’t his fault?
That would be “ironic” because -- before this global pandemic – evidence indicated that the main thing that was bolstering Trump’s chances for re-election was that people were giving Trump credit – likewise undeserved -- for the economy’s strength.
“Undeserved” because, though the economy has been good, virtually all its strength has been merely a continuation of the previous eight years of economic recovery since the 2008 crash. (Although the unemployment rate continued to decline during Trump presidency, for example, the rate of job creation actually went down since Trump took office.)
(The one dimension of economic good news for which Trump actually has deserved “credit” has been the rising stock market. But that increase in the value of stocks was largely purchased by a tax cut that transferred some trillions of dollars from average citizens and future generations to the corporate system. So of course the market value of those corporate beneficiaries of the Trump tax cut would increase.)
But political scientists have long pointed out that the American electorate deals with Presidents much as the people of ancient China regarded their Emperors. China’s Emperors got credit for whatever good and blame for whatever bad occurred under their reign, because the Chinese believed that whatever happened signaled “Heaven’s” pleasure or displeasure with the ruler. And historical evidence indicates that Americans -- even without any such belief – respond similarly, giving Presidents credit or blame for many developments those Presidents do nothing to cause.
So now this global pandemic has hit the United States, and -- in order to save perhaps millions of lives by slowing the spread of the disease -- the nation has been forced to take measures that shut down a good deal of America’s economic activity, causing economic hardship and a plunging stock market.
And, as I said, at first I thought about the irony of Trump being blamed for economic hard times caused by a disease for which he had no responsibility.
However, we’ve recently learned how much more dire our situation is going to be -- in terms both of likely lives lost and damage to our economy -- because of Trump’s consistent mishandling of this crisis. As David Frum -- a former speech-writer for George W. Bush, and a conservative Republican -- has written:
“This crisis is not of Trump’s making. What he is responsible for is his failure to respond promptly, and then his perverse and counterproductive choice of how to respond when action could be avoided no longer.” And he goes on to say that “because of [Trump’s] presidency”
“more people will get sick” “more people will suffer the financial hardship of sickness” “the medical crisis will arrive faster and last longer” “more people will lose their jobs” “more businesses will be pushed into bankruptcy” “more savers will lose more savings than if somebody else were in charge” “the damage to America’s global leadership will be greater”“than if somebody else were in charge.”
Yes, Trump has belatedly come around. But we would be foolish to forget what we’ve seen: that it took two months into the crisis before Trump finally realized that the pandemic could not be conned or bluffed away and that his political interest required that he stop lying and finally act like a President and actually deal with the nation’s needs.
Clearly, someone who put his own political interests ahead of the needs of the people is not a leader that it is safe for us Americans to rely on to protect our security and interests in a crisis.
Some have suggested that Trump’s failures of leadership around the coronavirus will be the thing that finally persuades many Trump supporters that he’s not the kind of leader the nation needs.
Their idea is that people who weren’t bothered by the ugly picture of Trump violating the Constitutional order (displayed during the impeachment process) will be angered by Trump’s costly mishandling of the coronavirus crisis.
That is, people who might feel, “What do I care about the rule of law?” will care a lot when people in their own lives get sick and die because Trump squandered valuable time – ignoring the experts and lying about the situation for two crucial months – before, finally this week, telling the country the truth regarding essential aspects of our situation.
(Trump is why the American response has been by far the slowest and most bungled of all advanced societies—even after South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore had shown how the impact of the pandemic could be limited.)
The idea is that when it is his supporters’ own health and well-being that Trump fails to serve because of his conspicuously putting his own personal political interest ahead of the national interest (just like in the Ukraine quid pro quo), they will take it take it quite personally and reject him.
But I’m somewhat skeptical.
I wonder how many of those who have supported Trump all along will notice all the falsehoods Trump has told about this crisis (like declaring the virus “contained” when its spread was just beginning, or claiming that testing was available for everyone who needs it when the shortage of tests was in the headlines).
It is, at any rate, hard to imagine that the kind of people who somehow could believe Trump that the coronavirus was a Democratic “hoax” to bring Trump down
in spite of how nations all over the world were already contending with it, and despite how investors all over the planet were driving markets off a cliff because of what the pandemic would requirewill somehow discern how Trump’s failures of leadership took an inescapable crisis and made it worse, condemning Americans to more widespread sickness, death, and economic damage than we needed to suffer.