The pandemic has turned conservatives into their liberal boogeymen
Conservatives like to accuse liberals of wanting more government first, effective government second. In this caricature, Democrats and the left support larger government as a goal in and of itself, regardless of whether said government exercises the power it’s been given competently. Like any caricature, of course, that picture was never accurate. Instead, the covid-19 pandemic is turning conservatives into the “big government” boogeymen that they claim liberals to be.
On ABC’s “This Week,” Larry Kudlow, the director of the National Economic Council, was asked to respond to former president Barack Obama’s assessment of the administration’s pandemic response as “an absolute chaotic disaster.” The raw numbers support the former president. Officially, nearly 80,000 have died; the real total is almost certainly higher. In April alone, 20.5 million Americans lost their jobs, with even administration officials, who normally paint a rosy picture of the economy that President Trump treats as his signature accomplishment, expecting further losses in the months to come. But Kudlow disagreed:
I — with all due respect to the former president — and I — I really don't want to get into a political back-and-forth here — I — I just — I don't know what he's talking about.
I mean, with all the assistance we have done, with all the infrastructure that we, the Trump administration, working with governors and mayors and with Congress. With respect to testing, with respect to all manner of, you know, PPE, medical equipment, with respect to ventilators, you know, this President Trump, one thing shouldn't be lost here, he has -- and it's unusual in these emergency situations -- he's made great use of the private sector, talking about that earlier in terms of reopening in a safe manner.
You know, we have relied very heavily on the smartest people in this country who run retail operations, pharmaceutical companies, biotech companies. You got automobile companies producing ventilators at a rapid rate. We've ramped up the testing. We have the world's largest testing percentages so far.
So, I just -- I don't understand what President Obama is saying. It just sounds so darn political to me.
I just want to say this -- look, what we’ve done may not be 100 percent perfect. You know, these things happen once every 100 years. But the overall pictures, we’ve created a massive health and safety infrastructure to deal with the pandemic here in the United States. And judging from the results, where there has been a flattening in the rate of growth in infection rates and mortality rates, it’s working, so we’re preparing to reopen the economy.
“A massive health and safety infrastructure” — not a “competent” infrastructure or an “effective” infrastructure, a “massive” infrastructure. Kudlow’s comments echo similar comments from the president, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, touting testing and production even as the death toll rises. Pay no attention to the bodies, say Trump and his acolytes. Look at how much stuff we’re doing! It’s classic “more government, not better government.”
Whether the size of the government’s response really is “massive” — and that is open to question — doesn’t change the fact that many experts say we’re still not testing enough to reopen the country. Or that a key part of the response is led by the president’s bumbling son-in-law. Or that the administration has decided a couple thousand deaths a day is a success. Then again, the dead and the unemployed are disproportionately black, Latino and poor, not the president’s people, so why should we expect his administration to care?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/05/10/pandemic-has-turned-conservatives-into-their-liberal-boogeymen/
