Befuddlement in the Time of Coronavirus

On March 18, President Trump, at long last beginning to grasp the seriousness of the coronavirus, offered these awkward words: “I view it as – in a sense – of wartime president.”

I don’t believe Trump knows what it would mean to be a wartime president. I’m guessing that one of his White House suck-ups told him presidents are usually re-elected during wartime and that inspired his clumsy declaration. But let’s face it, if Trump had been president in 1941, we might well be speaking German today.

When the U.S. was attacked on December 7, 1941, President Roosevelt acted quickly and decisively to prepare the country to face the crisis. Admittedly this was much easier for him to do than it would be for Trump, because unlike Trump, FDR had not spent his years in the White House dividing the country, insulting political rivals with crude nicknames, and demeaning women, minorities and immigrants as Trump has done. And FDR did not dissipate trust in his administration by lying dozens of times every day. Roosevelt didn’t always tell the truth, but he did not routinely spout out preposterous and obvious lies in order to convince the gullible that he was the most incredible “winner” the world had ever seen. Only a total loser would do such a thing, if you know what I mean.

If Trump were the equivalent of a capable wartime president, he would have pushed the nation into action starting in January, when it was obvious a new and deadly virus was about to infest the planet.

A smart president, whether at war or in peacetime, would never have abolished the office in charge of responding to pandemics and cut the funding for the Centers for Disease Control, as Trump did. In any case, a capable wartime president would have re-established or strengthened those offices, funding them generously. He or she would not put these offices in the hands of someone like Mike Pence, whose respect for science is, to say the least, questionable.

A wartime president, acting quickly, would have set American productive power to work months ago on manufacturing ventilators, face masks, coronavirus testing kits, and other necessities. Under FDR, American auto factories went from making cars to making tanks, planes and other equipment within a matter of weeks. Why isn’t our productive capacity making crucial medical supplies available to us right now?

The Second World War was won not by the U.S. fighting alone, but by a coalition of the U.S., Britain, the U.S.S.R., China, and other allied nations. Why aren’t we working closely with countries like South Korea, that have shown how the virus can be contained? Is Trump’s narrow-minded America First mentality keeping us from using every opportunity to protect us from the deadly COVID-19? If it’s not his suspicion of foreigners, what is it that’s stopping him from using help from other countries?

And, by the way, why isn’t Trump policing American politicians more effectively? Senator Richard Burr of the Intelligence Committee recently made a pile of cash buying and selling stocks on the basis of inside information about the pandemic threat. Burr seems to be emulating not a real wartime leader, but a fictional character, namely, Milo Minderbinder, Joseph Heller’s World War II schemer who raked in profits by (e.g.) selling to the Nazis exclusive rights to bomb and strafe American airfields. Good money for Milo (and Burr), not so good for the rest of us who are not in the loop.

What the country needs is not a slow-witted narcissist who likes to strut across the stage calling himself a wartime president. We need a trusted leader who knows how to gather and deploy all the powers of the nation to meet and defeat the coronavirus threat. When will we have such a leader?