When assessing how well our political leaders are doing and their job performance, it is important to look beyond the rhetoric to examine actual policies and real-world results.
Sometimes, political leaders who speak or behave poorly do a surprisingly good job, while political leaders who speak and behave in a more suave and polished fashion implement bad and disastrous policies.
Yet, if we focus simply on rhetoric and demeanor, and not policies and results, we miss what is most important. We elevate style over substance. We deprecate rhetorically challenged leaders with good records, while lauding silver-tongued politicos with bad records.
This is, of course, precisely backward. Results should matter more than rhetoric.
President Trump, obviously, is a political leader who is, to put it charitably, rhetorically challenged. His public pronouncements, especially his tweets, are often juvenile, embarrassing, and subliterate. Yet, his record as president is far better than his rhetoric would suggest.
Until the coronavirus pandemic hit, the U.S. economy was doing remarkably well, with record low unemployment, renewed economic growth, and a booming stock market.
The United States had avoided any major foreign policy crises, while adopting a more realistic approach toward China. Trump’s two Supreme Court appointments are superb, as are most of his federal court nominations.
Yes, Trump was pathetically slow to recognize the gravity of the coronavirus, largely because he was too trusting of China’s communist dictator, Xi Jinping. And his daily press briefings have been too often depressing, unenlightening, uninformative, and uninspiring.
This is not at all what we Americans want or expect from our president during a national crisis that is unprecedented in any of our lifetimes.
Still, despite his rhetorical weakness and tardiness, Trump has taken strong and decisive action to combat the coronavirus, and these politics have worked. The virus has been contained, and the worst predictions—two million dead, rationed care, a lack of ventilators, et al.—were never realized.
And—this is important—the worst predictions were never realized because of Trump administration policies.
The supply of ventilators to our nation’s hospitals is the most compelling case in point. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo spent most of March eloquently speechifying about how his state needed an additional 30,000 ventilators. Otherwise, he ominously warned, some patients who urgently need ventilators might be denied ventilators.
Trump was heavily criticized by his Democratic and media opponents for supposedly failing to deliver these ventilators.
Yet, behind the scenes, his administration was working diligently and creatively to ensure that ventilator production was ramped-up; and that ventilators were distributed in real-time, on an as-needed basis, nationwide to ensure that all patients were covered and cared for—and that exactly what happened.
In the end, no patient who ever needed a ventilator was ever denied a ventilator; and New York ended up donating ventilators to other states that needed them.
Of course, Trump never really explained this to the American people because he is so rhetorically weak and challenged. But his record of success here is impressive and undeniable.
Cuomo. Now, compare that to silver-tongued Andrew Cuomo, who speaks, acts and behaves like a political leader should during a time of national crisis. We here at ResCon1 have praised Cuomo for his leadership.
We even have suggested that, because of his performance during the coronavirus pandemic, Cuomo, and not Joe Biden, should be the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee.
This is all true. However, it is also true that, despite his rhetorical gifts and undeniable leadership, Cuomo’s record during this crisis is suspect and deserves serious criticism.
Ventilators. Specifically, Cuomo and his health commissioner, Dr. Howard Zucker, issued an edict Mar. 25 that required nursing homes “to admit or readmit recovering COVID-19 patients—despite openly acknowledging that the elderly are among the most vulnerable,” reports the New York Post.
The unsurprising result: “The coronavirus’ suspected death toll among New York’s nursing home residents exploded by an additional 1,700 fatalities.”
“COVID-19 complications have killed 4,813 residents of nursing homes and adult-care facilities—and that doesn’t include those who died in hospitals,” notes the Post’s editorial board.
“Known nursing deaths represent 25 percent of all deaths in the state,” adds Post columnist Michael Goodwin.
This is disgraceful precisely because these deaths were so predictable and avoidable. They resulted from a disastrous policy that Cuomo forced upon New York’s nursing homes.
“To them [the nursing homes],” explains Goodwin, Cuomo’s “March 25 order was a death sentence. Some facilities say they had no deaths or even positive patients before that date, but many of both since, including among staff members.”
New York’s nursing homes, reports the Post, “were clearly unprepared for the pandemic, lacking infection control protocols, sufficient personal protective equipment and tests to properly identify residents and staff infected with the virus.”
Rhetoric. Cuomo, of course, has tried to talk his way out of responsibility for this fiasco; and, truth be told, he is a much better talker than Trump. But rhetoric, no matter how eloquent and compelling, can conceal undeniable and indisputable truths.
And the truth is that Cuomo’s stupid and ill-advised policy re: nursing home admissions caused thousands of needless coronavirus deaths.
Yet, Cuomo’s more polished public persona and soothing rhetoric has had one beneficial effect, at least for him: It has spared him much media criticism that otherwise should be coming his way.
Trump, by contrast, has been the object of withering media criticism despite averting similarly bad outcomes and policy disasters.
The reason for this discrepancy, of course, is that Trump is, as they say, rough around the edges. He speaks poorly, shoots from the hip, vents his spleen, is prone to public displays of anger and frustration, and in general, behaves impulsively and acts out of pique.
What Matters. It would be much better for Trump and for the nation if he were more polished and disciplined; but at 73 years old, Trump is who he is. He won’t ever change.
We, however, can change our national focus and our national obsession. Instead of giving undue credence to Trump’s every utterance and solitary tweet, let’s focus more on his administration’s policies, record, and results.
And let’s do the same for his Democratic political opponents. That would result in a fairer and more balanced assessment of the Trump administration, as well as its possible successor or replacement.
Feature photo credit: New York Post.