Joe Biden has character, Donald Trump does not. The virus crisis makes it clear
- Max Boot
washingtonpost.com
Nothing reveals character like a crisis. The coronavirus crisis has revealed — or rather reinforced — that Joe Biden has what it takes to be an effective president and Donald Trump does not.
At a time like this, you want a leader who is calm, reassuring, knowledgeable and trustworthy. That’s not Trump. As the New York Times summarizes, the president has been a one-man disinformation machine: At first, he played down the pandemic (“We have it totally under control,” he said on Jan. 22), then he played up dubious cures. He has also attempted to blame others — including former president Barack Obama, who left office more than a three years ago — for his own mistakes. Apparently, the buck stops everywhere except the Oval Office.
President Trump’s biggest blunders were the shameful delays in testing and in mobilizing resources to fight the pandemic, due to his ignoring warnings in January and February from his own intelligence community. That negligence, which one expert has called the worst intelligence failure in U.S. history, cost us the opportunity to contain the pandemic before the United States became the world leader in coronavirus cases.
Trump’s trademark vacillations are more dangerous than ever. As recently as Thursday, he said New York doesn’t need 30,000 to 40,000 additional ventilators. Then on Friday he finally invoked the Defense Production Act to ramp up ventilator production — something he should have done weeks ago. He has been equally inconsistent on social distancing: Just days after irresponsibly speculating about lifting restrictions by Easter, he was irresponsibly speculating on Saturday about quarantining New York — which could encourage infected individuals, among others, to flee the city now.
Even in the midst of the worst epidemic in a century, Trump is incapable of putting his monumental ego aside for the common good. He has feuded with governors who are critical of the lack of federal help, bestowing one of his juvenile nicknames on Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) of Michigan and blasting Gov. Jay Inslee (D) of Washington as a “failed presidential candidate” and “a snake.”
Trump even said on Friday that he was instructing Vice President Pence, who leads the administration's coronavirus task force, not to return calls from Inslee and Whitmer because “they’re not appreciative to me, they’re not appreciative to the Army Corps, they’re not appreciative to FEMA, it’s not right.” This is reminiscent of a tribal chieftain, king or dictator who demands personal fealty before he will deign to disburse largesse to his subjects. Biden rightly rebuked Trump: “This is not personal. It has nothing to do with you, Donald Trump. Nothing to do with you. Do your job, stop personalizing everything." |
