Wayne O'Leary

Absentee President

Here are a few selected quotes from American presidents delivered in times of national peril or emergency:

“The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion.” — Abraham Lincoln, 1862

“I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1932

“For of those to whom much is given, much is required.” — John F. Kennedy, 1961

“No, I don’t take responsibility at all.” — Donald J. Trump, 2020

The quote by President Trump, a response to criticism of his administration’s inexcusable delay in turning out vital coronavirus test kits, pretty much summarizes the current occupant’s posture over the last three months of the pandemic crisis. There’s really been nothing remotely like it in American history. In the face of potential catastrophe, we’ve been treated to denials, exaggerations, outright lies, imaginary successes, blame shifting, and classic buck passing — the last named originating from an office where a prior occupant, Harry S. Truman, conspicuously mounted a sign informing all that “the buck stops here.”

It began on Jan. 22, two days after reports of the first coronavirus case in the US, when a soothing announcement went forth from the White House that everything was going to be “just fine,” because the president had things completely under control. The initial victim had just arrived from China, a fact that enabled the delighted coiner of nicknames to label the disease a foreign “Chinese virus.”

It was the latest instance of xenophobic scapegoating by Trump — whenever possible, blame other countries — and it foreclosed for the short run any cooperation with China over its acquired knowledge about the virus, the sharing of possible remedies, and US access to surplus Chinese medical technology (ventilators and respirators, for instance) to meet our domestic shortfalls.

A month later, facing the reality that things were not so fine on the home front, a bizarre claim, based on no known science, was issued from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The virus, said Trump on Feb. 20, would disappear by April; it didn’t like warmer weather and would suddenly vanish with a wave of the orange-maned Merlin’s presidential wand. It would be “like a miracle,” the health-care equivalent of the 2017 tax cuts that will raise wages mañana, if we’ll only believe.

Late February came and went, and the infection rate, which the stable genius had said would be down to “close to zero” by then, was still claiming victims. But things looked good to the tweeter-in-chief. “We have a perfectly coordinated and fine-tuned plan for our attack on coronavirus at the White House,” he informed the public on March 8. Those concerned about growing shortages of food and essentials amidst panic buying should “just relax.”

Further, the citizenry were informed, the sycophantic vice president, Trump’s lame point man and fall guy in reserve, was (like George W.’s Brownie) “doing a great job.” The virus tests were “all perfect,” and anybody could get one. Just in case, however, an infected cruise ship quarantined off the California coast would be kept there so as not to raise the official tally of domestic cases. Said the orange POTUS, “I like the numbers being where they are” (sans cruise ship) and besides, its inconvenient presence “wasn’t out fault.”

On March 13, the situation was worsening, but the purported leader of the free world, asked about his performance to date, responded, “I’d rate it a 10.” Anything to the contrary, he’d tweeted in a fit of paranoia a week earlier, was due to a hostile “Fake News media” that was out to get him.

Two days later, Trumpian irresponsibility reached an astonishing peak with gratuitous remarks calling on state and local officials across the country to, in effect, do the president’s job. Not only should governors and mayors lead the way and step up their efforts to test endangered Americans for coronavirus, they should also seek out testing supplies and needed medical devices on their own. “Try getting it yourselves” was the casual advice from on high. The peerless leader evidently had better things to do than coordinate a national health-care response (working on that golf game, perhaps).

There was a time when America produced leaders to fit critical times, leaders of character and competence: Lincoln during the Civil War, Roosevelt during the Depression and World War II, Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis. They’ve left indelible precedents (evidently unknown to Trump) on how to react to times like our own.

One of the enduring images of the New Deal is of FDR telling the nation it had “nothing to fear but fear itself,” then inaugurating his famous Hundred Days of legislation that included the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) to rescue the unemployed. FERA’s indefatigable director was Harry L. Hopkins, who seized the moment to dispense $5 million in government grants on his very first day, working in a makeshift office surrounded by packing cartons, files, typewriters, and furniture movers. Contrast that mobilization with the slow-walking ineptitude of the Trump administration.

The New Dealers also made government work to defeat fascism in World War II, setting the template for meeting materiel production goals on the home front. Where Herbert Hoover had tried to address the Great Depression by fruitlessly depending on unregulated commercial activity, volunteerism and charity, FDR proactively used federal agencies to both fight the Depression and later to set priorities and ground rules for private industry in establishing the U.S. as the Arsenal of Democracy for the Allied war effort — often over the objections of a reluctant business establishment focused on short-term profit.

Under the directives of the War Production Board (WPB), Detroit converted its assembly lines almost overnight from building cars for the civilian market to turning out tanks, planes, artillery, and munitions, increasing military output exponentially in the period after Pearl Harbor in a build-up that bordered on miraculous.

In contrast, when it comes to today’s pandemic crisis, Donald Trump and company are mired in Hooverian thinking, worrying about the stock market instead of the public’s health and looking to the business sector to solve the problem through individual entrepreneurship and private competition. Nationalization is, of course, verboten; the Trump administration’s preferred federal role amounts to providing industry bailouts and tax cuts, while ending economic and societal restrictions. As the Donald himself might say: Sad.

Wayne O’Leary is a writer in Orono, Maine, specializing in political economy. He holds a doctorate in American history and is the author of two prizewinning books.

From The Progressive Populist, May 1, 2020

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