History Does Not Have to Wait to Judge

“One of the first lessons a president has to learn is that every word he says weighs a ton.”
Pre-depression-era President Calvin Coolidge

“I don’t take responsibility at all.”
Donald Trump to a Reporter on March 13th.

“A scarf is highly recommended by the professionals… I think, in a certain way, a scarf is better. It’s actually better.”
Donald Trump said April 1st when it was clear there were not enough medically approved masks available.

Normally, a US president’s place in history takes time to evaluate. We can look back and see presidents who were not popular while in office to whom history was kind, and those who really screwed up, going down, after historical analysis, as clear failures. It is interesting to note the perspective of Max Boot, a historian, best-selling author and foreign-policy analyst who has been called one of the “world’s leading authorities on armed conflict” by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. He is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, a columnist for The Washington Post and a global affairs analyst for CNN.

 “Until now, I have generally been reluctant to label Donald Trump the worst president in U.S. history. As a historian, I know how important it is to allow the passage of time to gain a sense of perspective. Some presidents who seemed awful to contemporaries (Harry S. Truman) or simply lackluster (Dwight D. Eisenhower, George H.W. Bush) look much better in retrospect. Others, such as Thomas Jefferson and Woodrow Wilson, don’t look as good as they once did.

“So I have written, as I did on March 12, that Trump is the worst president in modern times — not of all time. That left open the possibility that James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Franklin Pierce, Warren Harding or some other nonentity would be judged more harshly. But in the past month, we have seen enough to take away the qualifier ‘in modern times.’ With his catastrophic mishandling of the coronavirus, Trump has established himself as the worst president in U.S. history.” The Washington Post, April 5^th (emphasis added)

Laissez faire presidents have not done particularly well in mega-crises. Herbert Hoover, for example, dithered under notion of letting the capital markets deal with the Great Depression; he did not believe in the direct government intervention to lift the nation. His philosophy and lack of direct responsiveness led to his dramatic defeat by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1932 presidential election. FDR promptly instituted the make-work efforts of the New Deal, an exceptionally popular injection of hope and work into the American economy. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, having already upped this nation’s military preparedness, FDR acted quickly and decisively.

No one is going to say that Donald Trump caused the outbreak of COVID-19; he just made its devastating impact on the United States so much worse. He absolutely was warned what was coming… and because if those warnings were to come true, he instinctively knew that the economy (his election calling card) would plunge, denial became his dominant message. Calming the markets and denying the impending calamity were his new mantra. Not lifting a finger to prepare was his absolute decision, one that lingered for what turned out to be an eternity in pandemic terms. We now have more COVID-19 cases and deaths than any other nation on earth, past and present! Devastating failure!

Instead of pushing for social distancing and sheltering in place, until late in the game, Trump insisted that such efforts should just be optional, at one point suggesting that people even consider returning to work, that the economic loss to the nation could easily be worse than the infection rate and the fatalities. Even as COVID-19 cases were exploding.  Beginning on March 19^th, Trump has repeatedly suggested that an anti-malarial drug was showing promise in treating the virus based on anecdotal information, falsely claiming it was FDA approved for that purpose.  There had been no testing; the use of such drugs (chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine) also carries with it the potential of severe side-effects, as noted by NIH’s Dr. Anthony Fauci. Drugstores soon ran out.

As recently as April 4^th Trump’s trade representative, Peter Navarro and Fauci battled as Navarro suggested that the nation needed a second opinion, hence chloroquine-based treatment should not be dismissed, and as the President then stopped Fauci from repeating his warning about this untested medication. “A Phoenix-area man has died and his wife was in critical condition after the couple took chloroquine phosphate, an additive used to clean fish tanks that is also found in an anti-malaria medication that's been touted by President Donald Trump as a treatment for COVID-19 virus…” Associated Press, March 24^th. But the unambiguous writing was on the wall months ago.

“U.S. intelligence agencies were issuing ominous, classified warnings in January and February about the global danger posed by the coronavirus while President Trump and lawmakers played down the threat and failed to take action that might have slowed the spread of the pathogen, according to U.S. officials familiar with spy agency reporting.” The Washington Post, March 20^th

A detailed analysis by the Associated Press confirms that federal inaction – effectively that early “hoax” and the “Democrats are exaggerating” period – delayed an effective containment of the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States by at least two months, a delay that will eventually push fatalities into an extra tens of thousands, if not more, of individuals who would still have survived had there been prompt and effective federal reaction. Even more would have survived if there had been increases, versus cuts imposed by the Trump administration, in the earlier overall national pandemic preparedness.

You only have to look at South Korea to see how profoundly impactful their preparedness was, and how many fewer infections and fatalities they had per capita when compared to the United States. As of this writing, South Korea has 183 fatalities — or 4 deaths per 1 million people, while the U.S. death ratio (25 per 1 million) is six times worse — and is expanding quickly.

Trump knew the risks pretty early in the game. The Associated Press analysis (April 6^th): “As the first alarms sounded in early January that an outbreak of a novel coronavirus in China might ignite a global pandemic, the Trump administration squandered nearly two months that could have been used to bolster the federal stockpile of critically needed medical supplies and equipment.

“A review of federal purchasing contracts by the Associated Press shows that federal agencies largely waited until mid-March to begin placing bulk orders of N95 respirator masks, mechanical ventilators and other equipment needed by front-line healthcare workers.

“By that time, hospitals in several states were treating thousands of infected patients without adequate equipment and were pleading for shipments from the Strategic National Stockpile. That federal cache of supplies was created more than 20 years ago to help bridge gaps in the medical and pharmaceutical supply chains during a national emergency.

“Now, three months into the crisis, that stockpile is nearly drained, just as the numbers of patients needing critical care is surging. Some state and local officials report receiving broken ventilators and decade-old rotted masks… ‘We basically wasted two months,’ Kathleen Sebelius, who served as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services during the Obama administration, told AP.

“HHS did not respond to questions about why federal officials waited to order medical supplies until stocks were running critically low. But President Trump and his appointees have urged state and local governments, and hospitals, to buy their own masks and breathing machines.

“‘The notion of the federal stockpile was it’s supposed to be our stockpile,’ Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and advisor, said Thursday [4/2] at a White House briefing. ‘It’s not supposed to be state stockpiles that they then use.’ [See my April 5^th So Much to Hide blog for more detail] … Because of the fractured federal response to COVID-19, governors say they’re now bidding against federal agencies and one another for scarce supplies, driving up prices.”

Across the board, the federal government has horded and then trickled release of needed supplies, sat on the Defense Production Act which the President seems only will to use (but where are the actual White House orders???) when he has a personal vendetta against a manufacturer. Shipments of federal supplies were actually delayed to states where governors where critical of Mr. Trump (like Michigan and Washington). Human suffering is massive. Financial pressures are also sapping the souls even of those not infected by the virus.

For those feeling the soul-crushing pressure of financial decimation, the desire to “get back to work” rises with every day, balanced by the reports of escalating numbers of COVID-19 patients. Trump keeps telling us that return to normal is just around the corner. It isn’t. “During the Great Recession of 2007–2009, the economy suffered a net loss of approximately 9 million jobs. The pandemic recession has seen nearly 10 million unemployment claims in just two weeks.” The Atlantic, April 2^nd. In the last few days, the number has moved closer to 13%, the worst numbers since the Great Depression. The reality is that the disease will fade, probably lingering at some level even into 2021.

The future presence of a viable vaccine and more effective treatments, which I suspect will happen in record time, might take the sting out of that lagging virus tail. But we do not remotely have enough data to project when the balancing act of “getting back to life as usual” or even “getting back to life more acceptable,” vs continued safe distancing and shelter in place, will occur.

“What we do know is that [some of] the work force may return when the level of infection reaches a more acceptable level. Essentially, economists say, there won’t be a fully functioning economy again until people are confident that they can go about their business without a high risk of catching the virus.

“‘Our ability to reopen the economy ultimately depends on our ability to better understand the spread and risk of the virus,’ said Betsey Stevenson, a University of Michigan economist who worked on the White House Council of Economic Advisers under President Barack Obama. ‘It’s also quite likely that we will need to figure out how to reopen the economy with the virus remaining a threat.’” Jim Tankersley, writing for the April 6^th New York Times. Bottom line: just about every Trump projection of when normalcy might return has been dramatically wrong.

Reality? Get used to the new normal: “Social and physical distancing will be the reality for the next year and a half, possibly longer, depending on when a new vaccine is ready. Businesses will have to make design changes to insure their offices, factories, and retail outposts enable social distancing…. [Some] institutions and spaces will require bigger retrofits [like] airlines and airports… arenas, stadiums, theaters and malls [as well as hair salons, restaurants, fitness centers, classrooms, etc.].” Richard Florida, professor at the University of Toronto’s School of Cities and the Rotman School of Management and Rana Florida, corporate CEO and author, writing for FastCompany.com, April 6^th. Health checks will also become routine, and certain higher at-risk individuals may just have to continue to rely on remote-from-home-work, where that is possible. Until that vaccine is widely deployed, life will continue to be a lot harder.

We cannot rely on Donald Trump and those who report to him. An objective review of Donald Trump, one not based on fake news and impossible aspirational promises to desperate Americans terrified at the changes they see around them, is one of abysmal failure, particularly for middle and lower economic classes. Those failures pale in comparison to his utter inability (unwillingness?) to take obvious, timely, consistent and necessary steps to contain and minimize the greatest calamity to hit this nation since WWII: the COVID-19 pandemic. Trump’s lack of transparent and effective leadership will also make recovery exceptionally more difficult and prolonged. We do not need the passage of time to understand that Donald Trump, at least as of 2020, is the worst President of the United States ever, a sobriquet that will be his legacy for all of history.

            I’m Peter Dekom, and notwithstanding any approval polls to the contrary, just looking around at this nation as whole without blinders, we now know or should know that Donald John Trump is the worst president in US history.