How Does One Rate a Perfect "10" "Wartime President"? Churchill Would Know.

The President famously rated his performance handling the COVID19 pandemic a "10".  But as the number of cases in the U.S. rises to 311,63 and the death toll  reaches 8,454 as of 1 A.M. Central time on April 5, 2020 with much, much worse to come, what kind of a job has President Trump really done in protecting the American people?  The most recent ABC News/Ipsos national poll show the president's approval rating dropping from 55% on March 18 to 47% on April 1-2.  Could it be that as the public pays more attention and educates itself with sources other than the president, the true magnitude of the crisis is starting to hit home?  Might it have something to do with the "wartime president's" leadership "style", what can accurately be described as used car salesman puffery combined with inconsistent and misleading messaging punctuated by abusive tirades directed toward journalists merely doing their jobs?

Due to the hyper partisan times we live in, I think it is helpful to see what people outside the United States  are saying about the job our self-proclaimed "wartime president'" is doing responding to the pandemic .  To the neutral observer, our government's response to the pandemic is not exactly garnering the rave reviews our president gives himself.  For example, here's the title of one of the latest articles from the Guardian newspaper in the UK:  "The Missing Six Weeks:  How Trump failed the Biggest Test of his Life".  The article compares the response taken by the government of South Korea to that of the United States since January 20, 2020, the day both countries had their first confirmed case of the corona virus and the differences could not be more stark.  Here's how the Guardian article described the contrast:  

"One country acted swiftly and aggressively to detect and isolate the virus, and by doing so has largely contained the crisis. The other country dithered and procrastinated, became mired in chaos and confusion, was distracted by the individual whims of its leader, and is now confronted by a health emergency of daunting proportions.

Within a week of its first confirmed case, South Korea’s disease control agency had summoned 20 private companies to the medical equivalent of a war-planning summit and told them to develop a test for the virus at lightning speed. A week after that, the first diagnostic test was approved and went into battle, identifying infected individuals who could then be quarantined to halt the advance of the disease."

Anticipating President Trump and his followers penchant for "alternative facts", intellectual dishonesty and general delusional state of denial, the thoughtful journalists at the Guardian even included a compilation video (watch above) showing a timeline of the president's falses, misleading, inconsistent and contradictory statements.  It will be impossible for Trump to rewrite history after the damning case his own words make for him and his legacy for posterity.

As we enter the coming dark days of this pandemic I remind my fellow citizens that the worst outcomes, outcomes which were known and could have been greatly mitigated, are looking more and more  inevitable.  The lack  of an early and aggressive response by our federal government to mobilize and coordinate with the private sector in developing a reliable test, conducting a widespread testing regime, building out our supply of ventilators and personal protective equipment or PPE and working with state governors to reach a consensus early on in the crisis on uniform social distancing and stay at home orders, has sealed this country's fate.

The Guardian article goes on to quote experts such as Jeremy Konyndyk, former USAid official in charge of the US government’s response to international disasters, on how the |Trump Administration has handled those critical first six weeks in responding to the pandemic.  Konyndyk told the Guardian: “We are witnessing in the United States one of the greatest failures of basic governance and basic leadership in modern times.”

 The Guardian article went on to describe the basis for Konyndyk harsh analysis, "...the White House had all the information it needed by the end of January to act decisively. Instead, Trump repeatedly played down the severity of the threat, blaming China for what he called the 'Chinese virus' and insisting falsely that his partial travel bans on China and Europe were all it would take to contain the crisis".

The following two graph's from the statistics pros at Our World Data illustrate the possible relationship (notice I don't say causal effect, I leave that up to the statisticians) between conducting early and aggressive testing, combined with isolating and practicing social distancing and success at flattening the curve.

I don't think Churchill would be kind in his critique of our self-described "Wartime President".  If he were alive today, not only would Churchill be sounding the alarm, comparing Trump's naivete vis a vis Putin's Russia to that of Chamberlin's naivete vis a vis Hitler's Germany, but he would also be aghast over Trump not knowing the first thing about effective leadership in times of crisis.  Churchill understood that with good leadership you can overcome great adversity. 

Good leaders quell fear and motivate with  credibility and facts not puffery and deceptive salesmanship.  Besides Churchill clearly knew the difference between the "beginning of the end" (as Trump declared from the very onset of the crisis and up until very recently) and the "end of the beginning".