{"id":9407,"date":"2020-03-10T03:54:40","date_gmt":"2020-03-10T10:54:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=9407"},"modified":"2020-03-10T05:06:36","modified_gmt":"2020-03-10T12:06:36","slug":"trump-and-the-pandemic-the-wall-street-journal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=9407","title":{"rendered":"“Trump and the Pandemic”, The Wall Street Journal"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Walter Russell Mead, Opinion, Global View, March 9, 2020<\/span><\/p>\n

The virus can\u2019t be bluffed or bullied and will soon become his greatest adversary.<\/em><\/p>\n

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The coronavirus pandemic is the greatest challenge Donald Trump has ever faced. As stock markets fall and patient numbers rise, the epidemic threatens the lives of some Americans and the prosperity of all\u2014and it has already begun to disrupt the political methods that brought Mr. Trump to the White House.<\/p>\n

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As he has done in other crises, the president is stalling for time as he processes the nature of the threat and tests rhetorical and policy responses to it. But unlike human political adversaries, the coronavirus isn\u2019t something he can bluff, threaten or placate. If the epidemic follows the course medical experts believe to be largely inevitable, both the disease and its economic consequences will be immune to Mr. Trump\u2019s standard tactics. He can\u2019t spin them away, divert public attention by creating another drama, or blame them on President Obama. In the near future the mass rallies that have been critical to Mr. Trump\u2019s political success may be banned on public-health grounds. If he is especially unlucky, one of his rallies could be implicated in a major outbreak.<\/p>\n

Many of the key points in Mr. Trump\u2019s case for re-election are also at risk. A recession would deprive him of the argument that, whatever you think of his character, he puts money in your pocket. A pandemic also undercuts his contention that a \u201cwrecking ball\u201d presidency is needed to destroy a rotten establishment. That reasoning works better when it comes to university administrators overreaching on Title IX and ultraliberal journalists than with the medical establishment and public-health professionals. Voters tend to like stability in a crisis.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the media multitudes who loathe Mr. Trump will do everything they can to turn the epidemic into a Hurricane Katrina event. That would be easy to do even if the government\u2019s response is near-flawless; epidemics are messy. There will almost certainly be heartbreaking tragedies that can plausibly be blamed on administration policies. There will be shortages of medical supplies. Some hospitals will be stretched past the breaking point. The bureaucracy and its leadership will inevitably fall short in many ways. In an election year when health care is a major political issue, every failure and problem in the coronavirus response will be politicized and publicized, putting the administration on the defensive as the economy falters and the virus spreads.<\/p>\n

The administration\u2019s response, one may confidently assume, won\u2019t be flawless. This isn\u2019t only because the epidemic is a challenge that would test any president. Mr. Trump\u2019s improvisational and chaotic approach to governance, rooted in his reliance on intuition and impulse as well as his use of conflict as a management method, will combine with the deep lack of trust between political and career officials across the government to produce highly public missteps and policy errors. Critics will have an abundance of ammunition.<\/p>\n

The president\u2019s basic political method is theatrical. Many Americans have come to believe that what happens in Washington is mostly fake news, more like professional wrestling than a serious ideological and political struggle with major consequences for their lives. Mr. Trump, from the vantage point of a long career in casinos and reality television, understands this better than his rivals. He approaches politics as entertainment and has repeatedly foiled opponents by turning potentially disastrous developments\u2014impeachment, for example\u2014into thrilling new episodes of \u201cThe Trump Show.\u201d But a pandemic will affect voters more than scandals and pratfalls in the faraway capital. If a recession comes as well, will voters lose patience with Mr. Trump\u2019s sizzle and spin?<\/p>\n

None of this means that the coronavirus will necessarily succeed where Russiagate failed in bringing the Trump Show to an inglorious end. The president is an extraordinary political talent and has some advantages that shouldn\u2019t be discounted. Unconstrained as he is by worries about debt and deficits, he can propose massive relief packages. The incompetence of China\u2019s early responses to the disease gives Mr. Trump a convenient scapegoat and will reinforce public doubts about globalization. The shortcomings of national health systems in Italy, France, Britain and elsewhere will at least partly blunt attempts to blame a U.S. epidemic on the absence of such a system here. The impact of the disease on Iran, China and North Korea could help Mr. Trump score foreign-policy wins.<\/p>\n

And then there are his critics. Their loathing of the 45th president is so intense that their rhetoric can turn voters off. Mr. Trump is a master at exploiting these sorts of missteps, and he will be looking for targets of opportunity.<\/p>\n

Despite all that, the coronavirus, if it continues on its present course, will soon become the most powerful adversary the Trump administration has yet faced. Mr. Trump\u2019s other opponents, from Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to the Iranian mullahs and Kim Jong Un, have nothing on a disease that can threaten the lives of Americans and bring the economy to a grinding halt.<\/p>\n

About this article<\/h4>\n

Global View<\/a><\/h4>\n
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\u201cGlobal View\u201d analyzes ongoing developments in foreign affairs, with a particular focus on American strategy and geopolitics. The column appears on the Wall Street Journal\u2019s website every Monday evening and Tuesdays in print.<\/p>\n

Walter Russell Mead is the James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and the Humanities at Bard College,\u00a0the Ravenel B. Curry III Distinguished Fellow in Strategy and Statesmanship\u00a0at the Hudson Institute, and The Wall Street Journal’s Global View columnist.<\/p>\n

The Wall Street Journal<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Walter Russell Mead, Opinion, Global View, March 9, 2020 The virus can\u2019t be bluffed or bullied and will soon become his greatest adversary. The coronavirus pandemic is the greatest challenge Donald Trump has ever faced. As stock markets fall and patient numbers rise, the epidemic threatens the lives of some Americans and the prosperity of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9407"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9407"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9413,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9407\/revisions\/9413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}