[throwaway32120]

One of the problems with the hyperpartisanship in America is that it prevents people from acknowledging leadership problems that both parties share. Though I think that Trump has done an incredibly poor job of handling this crisis, there's little evidence that other leaders - in Congress, at the state level, in the media, etc. - have done any better. Of course all our leaders will want to blame other people right now - failure is an orphan, as the saying goes.

I just did a search for news articles from the end of January to the end of February, and only found articles like this one[1], where politicians are criticizing the Trump administration's communication, but aren't callng for stronger efforts or mass mobilization (and the article has a quote from Pelosi saying she has confidence in how the CDC is handling things). Congress wasn't passing legislation to fight the pandemic as things were heating up, and governors don't seem to have made effective plans. The media didn't consider it to be a major disaster until recently (it didn't get brought up in the presidential debates until a couple weeks ago, IIRC). Issues like our lack of emergency stores for things like masks and our lack of an ability to manufacture them here is an issue that goes back for years, as is the poor safety net that leaves Americans so vulnerable in times like this.

Hopefully this crisis will encourage people to look at the poor leadership America has had across the board. Simply getting rid of Trump and calling it a day is just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2020/02/05/some-law...

[jayd16]

This is a failure of the executive branch. Congress did its job long ago. The executive branch already had the legal means it needed but the administration chose to abdicate its responsibility.

[gfodor]

Trump cancelled flights in January and was called xenophobic by the minority leader (who cowardly deleted the tweet.) There is plenty of blame to go around. If you actually want to prevent this from happening again, problems need to be corrected beyond the hypothesis of “we elected a bad leader.”

[cycrutchfield]

Cancelling flights is not even remotely courageous or impactful, given that the virus was already spreading in WA at that time. After January, the Trump administration did essentially nothing productive to prepare for the coming storm and squandered the following critical 6 weeks claiming it was no worse than the seasonal flu.

There is plenty of blame to go around but it concentrates at the top.

[gfodor]

The fact that you leap from "Trump should have done more" to "what Trump did was not impactful" shows your bias. Cancelling flights was impactful, but clearly insufficient. You're the one who is off-balance here, not me. There were systematic failures to recognize the threat from leaders and citizens alike. Regulatory structures that have been in place for decades have shown their cracks in an emergency. The CDC/FDA dumped tons of red tape on the testing process, and 'fixed' the problem by taking themselves out of the loop. The testing debacle was well underway during the timeline you mention - what does that tell you? If it only tells you "Trump fucked it up", you're not paying attention. It may be a contributing factor, but we have some real, serious problems beyond who is at the top of the executive branch. Similar weaknesses are about to be exposed in the clinical trial testing process, due to the degree to which we have culturally landed on p-values and statistical power needed to lead to action - there's a chance to correct that now, but if we're focused on Trump, and only Trump, we will fail to do so pre-emptively and it will cost more lives.

I have been preparing for this since early January, have you? If not, why not? If not, you fell into the trap almost everyone else did to fail to recognize the threat and the exponential nature of the threat. So stop throwing stones from within your glass house, and look forward. Critique the actions of leaders who are behind the curve today, not those who were behind it yesterday. The finger pointing backwards can happen later: for now, we should focus on course correction and survival.

Also, I did some more research, and it sounds like the tweet I was referencing above was in fact misinformation. So I stand corrected on that one! However, it was certainly the case that at the time flights were being called to be cancelled from China, there were accusations of xenophobia being through around.

[cycrutchfield]

As I said, there is plenty of blame to go around, but I am particularly incensed at a specific person who had the power to do more but essentially did nothing. In times of crisis, the quality of leadership matters tremendously. Trying to deflect by saying “the other side would have been the same” or “whatabout all these other people that failed” simply demonstrates the bias that you accuse me of.

[jayd16]

>"Trump should have done more" to "what Trump did was not impactful" shows your bias.

These are not mutually exclusive in any way.

[throwaway32120]

Do you have evidence that other politicians would have handled things significantly differently? As I said, the articles I found from the beginning of the crisis don't demonstrate that. Have you found any articles from, say, the beginning of February where politicians are calling for a much more robust response? The legislative branch certainly has the ability to act when they don't think the executive branch is up to the task (they actually were embroiled with a political battle with Trump at the start of this, but it was about impeachment).

Getting rid of Trump and replacing him with someone who would have handled this much better is great. Replacing Trump with someone who would have handled things about as well, keeping all the other political leaders who dropped the ball on this, and not changing the deep structural issues that have made things worse, will do little to help.

[jayd16]

State leadership stepped up while conservative media was echoing the president's narrative that that response was a liberal hoax. There's a stark difference between the standard response and how the president acted.