Ideological and Moral Nihilism Underlying Trump's Pandemic Mishandling

 Ideological and Moral Nihilism Underlying Trump's Pandemic Mishandling

 It is all-too easy to focus on the many missteps, shifting of blame, and outright lies the Trump administration has propagated on the U.S. public in its handling of the current pandemic crisis. Such a critique would detail the president’s initial dismissal of the COVID-19 crisis and his accusations against the Democrats and the media for perpetuating a hoax by exaggerating the story for the express purpose of making Trump look bad.  One could also point to the lack of clear direction from the federal government in coherently leading the nation through this crisis, the petulant blaming of China, the World Health Organization (WHO), the name calling of governors, and the shaming of reporters for asking legitimate questions.  While for a short time referring to himself as a “wartime president,” in flouting science and wrecking an emerging national consensus on how to address the conjoined health and economic emergency we currently face, our divider-in-chief intensified the culture wars by pitting red and blue citizens in hostile polarization on how to address the problem, one in which only he can fix.

 Underlying these postures, is Trump’s failure to approach the crisis from a bi-partisan basis in his refusal to include Democratic legislators in the signing of the overwhelming bi-partisan passage of the latest massive congressional bill and his failure to call on his four predecessors to publicly join him as a symbol of national unity.  Moreover, in his go-it-alone, confrontational, dictatorship-hugging foreign policy, the Trump administration has cut asunder the prospect of the United States playing a leading role in developing a solid global strategy to address this most dangerous virus. In short, the combination of conceit, ignorance, scapegoating, and ideological blindness has led to the lack of preparedness that set the stage for the current fragmented, confused, and inadequate Federal response.  Instead of sound policy, we were subjected to a daily diatribe, in which Trump, as a cliched reality star, dominated the airwaves with his largely self-serving, and sometimes, dangerous, nostrums, more than a few of which contradicted the best medical and scientific research that we have.  Rather than viewing the health and economic crisis as part of the same overarching problem, requiring a well-developed comprehensive approach to governance—drawing on medical science, strategic and logistical management, and innovative social and economic policy—the president persists in heightening ideological polarization and derailing the legitimacy of the Mueller investigation, which he referred to as the “Russia hoax.”  Even now, in the midst of the most consequential national crisis of the Post-WWII era, THIS is what he is focused on!

 I submit that there is something even more basic at play. As argued in an April Vox article (04-02-2020), the administration’s failure is rooted in the dismantling of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) team responsible to oversee pandemic crises in the spring of 2018, combined with massive budget cuts of the (CDC) and related agencies. These actions signaled that planning for such contingencies as pandemics—which President Obama warned about in 2014—was not a budget priority in the Trump administration.  That is because the ever-nimble Trump administration contended they can respond to such problems as they arise in real time, and therefore, do not need to incur the expense and suffer through the bureaucratic encumbrances that such planning requires. 

 The broader issue is the need for a full governmental response that the Republican Party, captivated by a radical anti-government ideology—and Trump’s egregiously playing to it, and amplifying its worst tendencies—is simply unfitted to handle. It is not that the GOP could never be in a position to address such emergencies as we currently face.  But to do so, it will need to re-invigorate its own liberal, moderate, and moderately conservative roots in the legacy of Lincoln, TR, Eisenhower, Ford, and GHW Bush and the many like-minded, governors, congressional representatives, mayors, and policy specialists, like James Baker and Brent Scowcroft, who have demonstrated the capacity to govern effectively in the modern world.  Former New Jersey Governor and EPA administrator, Christine Todd Whitman, is another moderate Republican who has exhibited the capacity for effective governance. Unfortunately, I see little prospect for such a revival in the GOP given the current, “government is not the solution. Government is the problem,” mentality that has dominated party’s political culture since the administration of Ronald Reagan.  

Given this reality, it is the Democratic Party that is best equipped to lead this nation, and not only through the current COVID-19 crisis, which is, ultimately, a very tragic one off.  Beyond additional pandemics and other similar national health crises, consider the existential problem of the century—the impending environmental emergency that looms large as a world-wide problem.  If this human induced global warming peril, in particular, is not substantially addressed during the upcoming decade, the result will be a national and world-wide catastrophe, the consequences of which we can only fathom.

 It was FDR rather than Hoover who had the intellectual, moral, and political vision to better address the economic, social and political challenges of the 1930s and 40s.  I believe that it is a unified Democratic Party that is best equipped to meet the economic, social, political, and international challenges of the 2030s and 2040s. Such leadership needs to begin, in full force, in this election year.  The alternative—the price of undergoing another four years of the concentrated chaos of these past few years—will cost us dearly, especially in the midst of such life orienting crises, as exemplified in the one we currently face, which will only proliferate in the next twenty years. 

2020