The acid test of Trump's maverick leadership has
come – can he save himself?
The
Observer
The president’s response to the coronavirus pandemic
has been ‘haphazard’, from a cascade of false statements to a public address
that fueled anxiety
David Smith
David Smith
in Washington
@smithinamerica
Sun 15 Mar
2020 06.00 GMT
With his
back to the wall, Donald Trump turned to perhaps the only people that truly
impress him: not health experts or scientists but the titans of corporate
America.
Confronted
by a global pandemic he cannot bully, insult or out-tweet, the president
paraded chief executives at the White House in the hope they could dig him out
of a hole partly of his own making.
Retailers
such as CVS, Target, Walmart and Walgreens – household names in America – will
provide “drive-thru” testing for the coronavirus, Trump promised, while Google
was developing a national website to offer guidance.
This,
however, came as a surprise to Google. The tech giant denied it is doing any
such thing.
The
bizarrely misleading claim was indicative of Trump’s mishandling of a crisis
different in magnitude from any he faced before. The former special counsel
Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation and the Ukraine scandal that led to
Trump’s impeachment did not send markets into free fall, force mass closures of
schools and sporting events or potentially put millions of lives at risk.
The acid test of Trump’s maverick leadership has
finally come.
His
response so far has been “haphazard”, said Michael Steele, former chairman of
the Republican National Committee. “When you start from the point of thinking
the whole thing is a hoax, or at least something your political opponents are
ginning up to use against you, it colours your whole approach.”
Trump’s
original sin was committed two years ago when he disbanded a White House office
dealing specifically with preparation for pandemics. His discomfort on this
topic was clear on Friday when a reporter asked him about it.
“Well, I just think it’s a nasty question,” he said.
“I don’t know anything about it.”
Trump’s
second big mistake was turning down the offer of a German-made diagnostic test
approved by the World Health Organization (WHO). Asked about the shortage,
which left America lagging far behind South Korea and other countries, Trump
said: “I don’t take responsibility at all.”
The past
few weeks have also brought a cascade of false statements that sought to
downplay the severity of the threat and wish it away. The coronavirus is not as
bad as the seasonal flu, Trump has maintained, and will disappear in the warmth
of spring. The slump of financial markets, on which Trump has yoked so much of
his re-election hopes, finally seized his attention.
Everything
he did, however, just seemed to make matters worse. He toured the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta wearing a “Keep America Great
Again” cap, boasting of his “natural ability” to understand the subject and
making the bogus assertion that any American who needs a coronavirus test can
get one.
On
Wednesday this week he addressed the nation from the Oval Office, live on
primetime TV. It was, in many viewers’ estimation, an unmitigated disaster,
fueling anxiety rather than calm, panic rather than reassurance. Trump blindsided
European officials by announcing a 30-day travel ban and made some basic
factual errors the White House had to correct.
Then came
Friday’s rose garden reset. Trump declared a national emergency that released
$50bn for state and local governments. Shaking hands with chief executives
despite medical advice on social distancing, the president promised a
public-private partnership to finally make testing widely available.
His
eternally loyal vice-president, Mike Pence, did his best to reshape the
narrative.
“This day
should be an inspiration to every American,” he said, “because thanks to your
leadership from early on, not only are we bringing a whole-of-government
approach to confronting the coronavirus, we’re bringing an all-of-America
approach.
“Mr President,
from early on, you took decisive action. You suspended all travel from China …
throughout this process, Mr President, you’ve put the health of America first.”
It was an
attempt to right the ship and restore confidence. But will it work?
There was a
promising sign on the stock market. The Dow Jones industrial average jumped
nearly 2,000 points – its biggest point gain ever.
Furthermore,
the are few signs that the coronavirus shambles has disillusioned Trump’s
supporters. Some 87% of Republicans approve of his handling of the problem,
according to a Quinnipiac University poll.
Sean
Spicer, a former White House press secretary, said: “I think they came out
really strong in terms of declaring flights shut down [from China]. The rollout
of the kits and the testing was a step backwards but now they seem to be
getting their footing back.”
His rhetoric
over this has been sloppy if not reckless: the Trump tendency to blurt out
things, loose talk
Bill Whalen
Bill
Whalen, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in
Palo Alto, California, said: “He gets mixed reviews. His rhetoric over this has
been sloppy if not reckless: the Trump tendency to blurt out things, loose
talk. Where he got good reviews lies in the government’s overall approach.”
Whalen
noted that California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, had praised Trump
for supporting his state in the repatriation of passengers from a
coronavirus-infected cruise ship.
Newsom told
reporters: “We had a private conversation, but [Trump] said: ‘We’re gonna do
the right thing’ and ‘You have my support, all of our support, logistically and
otherwise’. He said everything I could have hoped for and we had a very long
conversation and every single thing he said, they followed through on.”
Trump will
almost certainly face Joe Biden in November’s presidential election. Standing
before US flags, the former vice-president gave a speech this week about his
plan to tackle the coronavirus, presenting the image of a government in
waiting.
It made for
a telling contrast with Trump, who may find himself haunted by the spectre of
George W Bush’s bungled response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Whalen
said: “The question is how does he handle this as on a personal level. For
Bush, the problem with Katrina wasn’t the federal response but Bush not getting
out of the plane, not showing the personal touch. Nobody elected Trump on the
principle that he’d be the hugger-in-chief or the consoler-in-chief.
“The
economy is his trump card at all times. There are people who say: ‘I may not
care for the tweets or his bombastic bluster but I’m making money while he’s in
office.’ But now people will get their monthly statement and ask: ‘What
happened to 10% of my portfolio?’”
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