Inside Trump's Failure: The Rush to Abandon Leadership Role on the Virus

[Zorro]

The roots of the nation’s current inability to control the pandemic can be traced to mid-April, when the White House embraced overly rosy projections to proclaim victory and move on.

Each morning at 8 as the coronavirus crisis was raging in April, Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, convened a small group of aides to steer the administration through what had become a public health, economic and political disaster.

Seated around Mr. Meadows’s conference table and on a couch in his office down the hall from the Oval Office, they saw their immediate role as practical problem solvers. Produce more ventilators. Find more personal protective equipment. Provide more testing.

But their ultimate goal was to shift responsibility for leading the fight against the pandemic from the White House to the states. They referred to this as “state authority handoff,” and it was at the heart of what would become at once a catastrophic policy blunder and an attempt to escape blame for a crisis that had engulfed the country — perhaps one of the greatest failures of presidential leadership in generations.

Over a critical period beginning in mid-April, President Trump and his team convinced themselves that the outbreak was fading, that they had given state governments all the resources they needed to contain its remaining “embers” and that it was time to ease up on the lockdown.

In doing so, he was ignoring warnings that the numbers would continue to drop only if social distancing was kept in place, rushing instead to restart the economy and tend to his battered re-election hopes.

Casting the decision in ideological terms, Mr. Meadows would tell people: “Only in Washington, D.C., do they think that they have the answer for all of America.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/18/us/politics/trump-coronavirus-response-failure-leadership.html

Dr. Birx comes across in the article as a Robert McNamara type, using her projection models to contend that the Covid threat was receding relatively early and providing Trump and the administration with that happy-clappy talking point.

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1. Mid-April???

Ok, yeah, I get the point that he screwed things up around that time frame, but by then he was already several months deep into making disastrous mistakes about the pandemic at that point

[stopdiggin]

2. the hand off of "responsibility" to the states

is the key to this read. Prior to this, it was assumed (by pretty much every thinking person in the free world) that responsibility and coordination for combating a world wide pandemic -- would fall to the highest authority.

But Pontius Pilate washed his hands .... And ever since we've had -- this.

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3. We'd have even been better off if he had communicated this in February.

But of course, it's even worse than that, because Donnie has actively interfered with the states trying to manage the pandemic.

[stopdiggin]

4. hummm. I'd have to go with

the idea that a "states go it alone" strategy was close to insanity -- at whatever time it was trotted out.

And the proof is sorta' in the pudding.
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5. Well I agree

Just saying that if we knew earlier that the federal government was going to do worse than nothing, at least the states would have been able to prepare earlier.

[gulliver]

6. Birx has been one of Trump's biggest enablers and may end up one of his scapegoats.

This is an excellent article. Thanks for posting. It sheds a lot of light on Birx.

I still remember Birx just sitting there when Trump suggested bleach injections on live TV. Trump even said then that Birx had told him someone would "look into it." I still haven't seen someone ask Birx if she really told Trump that.

In terms of the pandemic management, if Birx didn't take into account the dynamic effects of Trump/Republican politics, Trump's demonstrated duplicity and dishonesty, etc., then she's just, well, an idiot. She crunches the data, uses a model, puts together guidelines, and hands them over. And she thinks that's it? She doesn't consider that the guidelines won't be followed but that she'll nevertheless be blamed for the failures that result? This is Trump and his Republicans we're talking about.

I didn't like Birx's approach from the beginning. She gave me the impression of fancying herself a "talented politician." She could get results even when forced to work with an ignorant, lying, self-obsessed dirt bag like Trump. Well, the Taj Mahal investors and contractors probably thought they were smart too.

[hedda_foil]

7. She's certainly being set up as the scapegoat in chief.

The information in this very good piece could only come from leaks "close to the president" as they say, and with deep access into the task force. Who could be the primary source? Who most needs to deflect blame from themself? (Other than the president who is NEVER responsible for anything.)

I dunno about you guys, but it sure seems like the WaPo went to Jared.