We’ve noted here at ResCon1 that President Trump’s failure to act early and decisively on the coronavirus has endangered American lives and forced the United States to take even more draconian measures than otherwise would have been necessary.
Trump’s apologists, however, are pushing back and telling us that we shouldn’t “politicize” this crisis.
Instead, they assert, implicitly (and sometimes explicitly), that we should rally around the president, who presumably is now taking the requisite bold and resolute actions necessary to combat the coronavirus.
As Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen put it on Fox News Special Report Monday night, March 16, 2020:
Well, it [politics] shouldn’t creep in. I mean, this is a time when we should come together as a nation [and] put aside partisanship, put aside the backbiting.
Look, after this is all over, I’m sure we’re gonna have a 9/11 commission-style investigation that’s gonna look through [all of this]—not to lay blame, but to figure out, just as we did after 9/11: where were the gaps; what didn’t work; what failed; what succeeded?
So [that] when the next pandemic comes around, we can fix it. But this is not the time for laying blame.
Nice try, but Thiessen has it exactly wrong and backward. In a representative democracy such as ours, and with a presidential election fast approaching now is exactly the time for “laying blame”—or, to be more precise:
Now is exactly the time to hold our elected leaders—especially the top political leader with the most responsibility and authority for protecting and safeguarding the American people—accountable for their what they did and did not do as the gathering storm approached.
Thiessen’s plea to “put aside the backbiting” echoes Trump’s own call to “end the finger-pointing.” But as David Frum points out in The Atlantic:
It’s a strange thing for this president of all presidents to say. No American president, and precious few American politicians, have ever pointed so many fingers or hurled so much abuse as Donald Trump.
What he means, of course, is: Don’t hold me to account for the things I did—[and did not do, but should have done].
But he did do them, and he owns responsibility for those things. He cannot escape it, and he will not escape it.
In short, bemoaning the “politicization” of this crisis is a transparent attempt to try and evade or avert responsibility and accountability for a leader’s actions and failings.
Accountability is important because, as I observed last week when calling on the Senate to censure Minority Leader Chuck Schumer:
The failure and unwillingness of institutions—churches, schools, corporations, professional societies, et al.—to maintain standards of professional conduct, and to police and disciplined their own, is a big reason institutions increasingly have lost the public’s trust and confidence, and, with that, their ability to mold the American character and shape the nation’s destiny.
This is not an insight unique to me, or even one that I can claim credit for.
Instead, as I’ve reported here at ResCon1, Yuval Levin makes this point brilliantly in a new and important book: A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream.
Our political institutions, including the Congress and the Presidency, are like any other institution, but arguably more important than other institutions because of the scope and magnitude of their responsibility.
Thus if we wish to maintain public trust and confidence in our political leaders and institutions, then we must hold these leaders and institutions accountable for their actions—and for when they fail to act.
This is not a partisan point for me. That’s why I called on the Senate to censure Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer; and it is why I insist that we hold Republican President Donald Trump to account as well
If Senator Schumer had acknowledged wronging and offered a sincere, good-faith apology after threatening two Supreme Court justices, then his censure might not be necessary.
If, likewise, President Trump had acknowledged that he wrongly minimized the coronavirus and mishandled the problem, then perhaps we could simply “move on.” But he didn’t and we can’t.
And we shouldn’t. Our political leaders need to know that their misdeeds and failings will not be ignored and whitewashed for reasons of political expediency.
Instead, they will be held to account by we the American people, and by the institutions of American democracy: because here the people rule, and we expect and demand no less.
For this reason, President Trump should be forced to explain why he didn’t push for early and rapid testing of the coronavirus on a mass scale, and why he continually minimized the problem and suggested that it would disappear.
And the American people should consider Trump’s response—or non-response—when, this fall, they decide who will serve as president for the next four years.
Feature photo credit: Red Blue Divide.