The coronavirus pandemic has provided a contrast in leadership that could not be starker. You only have to put side-by-side the nightly political rallies (“press briefings”) conducted by Trump and the daily press briefings by Gov. Cuomo, or for that matter, with the carefully considered, detailed plans to address the coronavirus pandemic that have come from Joe Biden.
Focused solely on election, Trump is desperate to get the economy back on track and doesn’t care how many lives are lost in opening it prematurely, or if there will be a resurgence of the disease, he bets wouldn’t happen until after Nov. 3.
And he fails to do anything to alleviate the suffering people are undergoing now.
Look at the epidemic in hunger – a doubling among the 40 million Americans who live with food insecurity, as Trump cut access to SNAP (food stamps) and WIC. He sits back as farmers are destroying their crops and dumping milk because hotels, restaurants and schools are closed.
A competent leader would have appointed competent people to lead his agencies. He would instruct the Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, instead of handing out bailouts by the billions, to purchase that product, organize deliver to the shuttered restaurants, hotels and schools, and hire their furloughed or unemployed staff to distribute to food pantries and shut-ins.
If you had a competent leader heading a functioning government, you would have Education Secretary Devos helping frustrated parents with homeschooling, forgive student loan debt; a Housing Secretary Ben Carson organizing housing for the homeless and those who need to be quarantined; Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia organizing a database to reemploy from among the 22 million unemployed into necessary jobs, creating the needed “army” of 300,000 testers and tracers, food delivery, homeschooling, health care administration, establishing new workplace guidelines to ensure safety, rather than shutting down OSHA enforcement, and lobbying for hazard pay for frontline workers many of whom endanger their life for minimum wages; you would have a Treasury Secretary Mnuchin who efficiently delivered small business loans and relief funding to people who needed it most rather than the politically connected and require lenders to refinance mortgages and loans at rates that reflect the near-zero interest they are being charged.
Meanwhile, some 35 million people are projected to lose their health insurance (the absurdity of tying health insurance to employment). A leader would use his actual power to reopen Obamacare enrollment.
Just about everyone in the world now knows that the bridge between the health-care crisis, which has depended upon stay-at-home orders to “flatten the curve” so not to overwhelm the healthcare system, taking with it the brave health workers on the front lines, and the economy is testing – you need to be doing a million tests a day, not a million a week. Indeed, if workers and consumers don’t feel safe, even if governors lift stay-at-home orders, workers won’t go back to work and consumers won’t feel safe to buy.
But rather than organize this nationally, Trump has chosen to repeat the debacle of the ventilators and PPE supplies, literally standing back as 50 states and the federal government compete against each other, bidding up product and disrupting deliveries. States don’t have the ability that the federal government does to acquire critical chemical reagents from China and other countries.
And Trump continues to lie about the availability of tests while blaming governors. He chided Gov. Cuomo, “stop complaining and do your job” and told Maryland Governor Hogan, who used his wife’s personal relationship with President Moon to buy 500,000 tests from South Korea that he was “misinformed” and wasted his state’s money. Wow.
A leader accepts responsibility; Trump only knows how to attack and destroy – he has accused health workers of hoarding or stealing PPE instead of taking responsibility for deficient supply; he has blamed Obama for the PPE stockpile, when he has been in office for 3 ½ years and each time has cut funding for CDC, not to mention eliminating the special Pandemic office.
On the other hand, Trump is seizing on the coronavirus to score political points. Instead of an actual immigration reform or renewing DACA (some 34,000 health workers are DACA recipients who are in fear now of being deported), he tweeted a new policy: shut down all immigration.
That’s rich since the virus is already here and with the US topping every other nation in cases and deaths it’s Americans who should be banned.
A real leader would have championed immigration reform, not built a wall, locked migrants in prisons where they are sick and dying and separated children from their parents. What significant legislation to address the biggest problems – climate change, healthcare, immigration – has Trump marshaled in the 3 ½ years in office?
In contrast to an actual leader, Trump takes credit for things that he had nothing to do with, most especially signing the $1200 stimulus checks that Republicans did everything possible to block.
His attitude is “I have no responsibility,” the federal government is “not a shipping clerk” for the potentially life-saving supplies and telling the states they are on their own.
“Don’t pass the buck without passing the bucks,” Cuomo said, noting that the states have received zero federal funding.
Instead, Trump frittered away months without taking action, “Why don’t we let this wash over the country?” he asked Dr. Fauci – in other words, accept that as many as 200 million would contract the disease and 2 million would die before a “herd immunity” stopped the spread.
Worst of all, the way Trump is undermining the leadership of governors who are actually succeeding in controlling the pandemic, egging on dangerous protests (“liberate Michigan” “Liberate Minnesota” “Liberate Virginia”), because as Cuomo, a real leader, knows, “I can’t mandate personal behavior.
“My strategy from day one, knowing we would have to ask people to do things that no government has asked them to do maybe since World War I or World War II, knowing that the only way I would get compliance, has been to give the facts, tell them why, why it is in their best interest, all our best interest” to comply.
Cuomo added, “In crisis, pressure brings out the best and worst in people– a snapshot of character, their foundation. “
“We have shown we can control the beast,” Cuomo said. “We determine the future. Decisions make today…We want to learn from this. We want to Build Back Better.”
That’s a leader.
