The mainstream media is having a field day blaming President
Trump for America’s CORVID-19 fiasco. And Trump certainly has been a font of misinformation
and vacillation throughout this event, but in fact just about EVERYBODY at the
federal level has performed poorly during this pandemic. The FDA and CDC have
slowed things down with bureaucratic inefficiency. It’s the FDA who won’t let Midwest
ethanol producers use their perfectly good alcohol to make hand sanitizer,
simply because it hasn’t passed some arcane rule. It’s the CDC who insisted on using their own
flawed test kits rather than using the well-tested World Health Organization
kits. It the Navy that fired a perfectly good officer just because he embarrassed
some of the top brass who were dragging their feet.
The World Health Organization insists it isn’t favoring the
Chinese, even though they threw Taiwan out of the organization at China’s
behest, and under pressure from China downplayed the pandemic for a couple of
months to cover for China.
And although Trump was indeed a little slow recognizing the dangers,
so were the leaders of most of the rest of the world’s nations, and a few still
are in denial.
And then there is the media, who now are excoriating Trump
for not closing down the nation soon enough, even though just a couple of
months ago they were accusing him of overreacting and overstating the threat
for political reasons. Indeed, when he (wisely,
in retrospect) barred travelers from China to the US at the end of January they
labeled him racist and xenophobic.
So yes, Trump isn’t the ideal leader for this crisis, but no
one else in the federal government, the political parties, or the media is
looking very good either. There is more than enough blame to go around. Fortunately,
the federal government has limited powers here and at least some of the state
governors seem to have good heads on their shoulders. It makes a good argument
for preserving the power of the states.
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