I continue to be unclear on what the rules for presidential accountability are these days. For example, I don’t see how you can give Obama credit for “saving the economy” without also pointing that the unemployment rate was higher under Obama than it was under Bush and that Obama officials were saying that the growth rate under Obama was as good as it will get.
This morning I saw some chortling on right-leaning sites blaming the lack of respirators on Obama’s failure to re-supply the federal stockpile. Guess what? Neither did Trump.
The politics of COVID-19 are interesting. Trump will undoubtedly be credited with saving the country by his supporters and blamed for letting it get as bad as it will and, concurrently, tanking the economy by his opponents.
In general I the only things I either credit or blame presidents for are related to foreign policy and the military where they have the most authority and I blame the Congress for just about everything else. Like politicians just about everywhere I think the members of Congress know what needs to be done. They just don’t know how they can keep their jobs if they do it and, well, there are priorities.
I honestly do not see how you can blame Trump for not closing international travel down and more tightly in late January without also observing that he was being impeached by the House then and the criticism he received for doing as much as he did. I also don’t see how you can deride Trump as a fascist and then complain that he isn’t acting more like a fascist.
My own view is that most of the complaints being lodged today are Monday morning quarterbacking and partisan in nature and that the reality is that for anything material to have been done to avoid where we will undoubtedly be going we would have needed to close down international travel tighter than a drum in December of even November and that would have required prescience.
Let’s talk about now. I think that President Trump should be using the Defense Production Act more lavishly than he is and should urge the Congress to take urgent steps during the crisis other than spend money, like suspending interstate air travel and, indeed, anything but necessary travel between states. Trucks, yes. Buses and passenger cars, mostly no.
I also wish President Trump were speaking to calm people’s fears but I’m afraid that just isn’t his style. Maybe he can rise to the occasion.
The president is in campaign mode.
“I honestly do not see how you can blame Trump for not closing international travel down and more tightly in late January without also observing that he was being impeached by the House then and the criticism he received for doing as much as he did. ”
Sure you can. Keeping Chinese tourists and businessmen from coming here was probably a help, but it might have help even more if we kept Americans from going over there and coming back. Not many Americans were going to hug Chinese tourists. Granny coming back from seeing the Great Wall is going to coffee klatch with everyone she knows. The poor testing is all on him. If you want to be the leader you have to lead. When they didnt have a viable test in a couple of weeks, like most of the rest of the developed world, he needed to step in.
Where he is not more culpable than any other president is our PPE/vent supplies. Lots of people could have done that better. Kudos to Bill Clinton for seeing it up to begin with.
All that said, other than being an ass, for the last couple of weeks he has been much better. He has supported social distancing, lockdowns, etc. Sounds like he and his team are trying to spread equipment around. I would agree with you that I dont understand why he hasn’t used emergency powers to provide more PPE especially. Vents will take a while but the other stuff should be able to tool up quickly, I think.
Steve
I very strongly disagree that Presidents control US foreign policy. None since Eisenhower has.
There are at least five groups that have semi-independent foreign policies, and at certain times one or the other control it. They are (1) the President, (2) the White House staff, (3) the State Department, (4) the Department of Defense, and (5) the CIA. Some would add Israel. These groups fight each other for control. The recent escapades of the Vindman brothers, Bolton, and Pompeo illustrate the problem. One of the Vindmans openly said that the President ought not to control foreign policy, and Bolton and Pompeo sabotaged Trump’s agreement with Kim.
DoD has sometimes openly defied Presidents. There was the case early in the Kosovo campaign where the Army slow-walked Clinton’s order to provide the Europeans with helicopter transport. More recently, the Pentagon rejected the deconfliction agreement Obama negotiated with the Russians, and forced him to renegotiate it. Lavrov famously noted that the US was unable to negotiate.
We are well on our way to having a Praetorian Guard that sells the Presidency to the highest bidder. Once the pandemic crisis is over, it will interesting to see how much if any of the emergency rules and legislation are repealed.
I believe the constitution does not allow anyone – the President, the President and Congress combined – to ban Americans citizens from coming back to US soil, no matter the circumstance.
They can order returning Americans to be put into quarantine — in this case they did ask returning citizens to go into self quarantine; and gave their information to the states.
As to interstate travel – while most commentators agree it is lawful power – it has not been exercised under the present public health laws dating from WW2. And given Gov Cuomo’s vow to sue when Trump floated the idea; it would be bitterly contested and create a separate crisis if attempted.
My own view is Congress needs to focus on updating HIPAA to support contact tracing ASAP, and various regulatory rules to support therapeutic development.
That may be true but flights and ships can be prevented from landing.
CO- Sorry I left that out. I agree that he should have let them back, but had them quarantine. But once he started that we should not have had people still leaving to go visit there.
This is pretty important as some now believe that you actually need fairly intensive contact to catch Covid. If true, then as I said, the tourists we re not as much a risk as granny.
Steve
Steve: From what I have read from your comments on this thread and earlier granny may be more at risk from the hospital staff (or nursing home staff) than she would be living with the general populace (so far). Not a denigration, merely an observation based on the traditionally high number of physicians and medical staff who come down with infections pathogens. You are on the front line, seeing an abnormally high ratio of sick-to-well people, so should come as no surprise to others.
Stay Healthy. Stay safe. Don’t let it get you down.
What is intensive contact??
Scott Gottlieb was tweeting some of the contact tracing the Singaporeans did. They had a case where someone got sick because they SAT on the same chair as a carrier at a different church service.
Or the National Academy of Science saying it can spread via talking and breathing.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/02/health/aerosol-coronavirus-spread-white-house-letter/
If that is the criteria for intensive contact — everyone is doing intensive contact the majority of the waking day.
Here is my critique on the travel restrictions.
Trump should have imposed restrictions on South Korea, Schengen, and Iran as soon those countries imposed limited lockdowns — about 2 weeks earlier then he actually did.
And even that probably only buys time. Scientists believe the virus got to Europe in mid January, the same time it arrived in Seattle. The Chinese Government was still denying it spread between people at that point.
or, in other words, it would have required prescience.
“If that is the criteria for intensive contact — everyone is doing intensive contact the majority of the waking day.”
There are always exceptions. Yes, you can get it from talking and breathing, but they have found that mostly comes from the kind of close contact you have from living together. Tracking shows that spread is mostly from one family member to another.
To be clear, I dont think we know everything we need to know, just noting if the people who think the virus is not caught so casually, then less than perfect measures combined with testing might not work so bad.
Steve
In January just about everyone thought that Covid wasn’t a big deal, which was abetted by Chinese deception for much of the month. I don’t think it’s fair to Monday-morning QB our government’s actions in January.
But starting sometime in February, it’s a different story.