I get it that all that Trump cares about is himself, about maintaining his hold on power. What I don’t understand is why Trump persists in failing to do the obvious: i.e. doing what is both the right thing and (what looks to me to be) the politically smart thing as well. And why he keeps on pushing to do the wrong thing, which looks like a ticket for his own political downfall.
The epidemiologists and other health experts seem to agree about what’s needed to begin opening up the nation again to economic activity: a major program of testing to identify who is clear of the virus and/or has immunity, combined with a program of chasing down those who have had contact with people carrying the virus. (Presumably, the experts know better than the people who are ignorant, so one might as well assume that this is indeed the wise course.)
Setting up such a program of massive testing and contact-tracing has been within the capability of the federal government. The President has the Defense Production Act available to him to get the vast industrial capacity of the United States producing whatever materials are needed— from swabs to PPEs — to conduct the testing.
The general outlines of what’s been needed have been pretty clear for a fairly long time— so this isn’t fresh news. Had Trump moved to accomplish this as soon as (we can presume that) he’d been told what was needed, the nation would be in a far better position now to get the economy restarted.
But Trump is still not doing it. Why not? He obviously wants to goose up the economy as quickly as possible. Why doesn’t he put all his powers to work to achieve that in a way that won’t produce a new disastrous outbreak of the coronavirus?
That’s the first mystery. The second involves what Trump does want to do. Which is to open the nation back up without taking the necessary precautions.
Trump’s push for reckless re-opening might make a certain malignantly-narcissistic sense if this were mid-October or some such time, on the eve of the election. It might work for him if people were to see some economic relief as they head to the polls, with the disastrous pandemic consequences postponed until after the presidential election.
But this is only April. If the economic revival were to take place prematurely, and without the necessary protective measures now, or next month, the resulting new wave of infections — which (according to the public health experts) would compel us to resume the lockdown and would condemn the nation to suffer another big batch of (preventable) deaths — would surface well in advance of the Election. And that would presumably underscore the disastrous nature of Trump’s leadership all the more.
So we’ve got Trump not acting in a way that could maximize our national economic activity by Election Day, even though he’s been getting that advice presumably for a good while, even though he’s got powers he could have been using to accomplish this, and even though that would presumably be best for him politically.
And we’ve got him working to get the nation to proceed in a reckless way that would create a visible public health disaster, even though that looks like it would be politically disastrous for him.
What’s with him? Is he really that stupid? Is he really that incompetent? Is there some way that his choices make sense, even given that all he cares about is Donald Trump?