Trump has ridden the Obama economy, artificially turbo-charged with the dangerous tax-cut sugar-high, through a largely mundane first three years. Now the Coronavirus will finally challenge Trump’s leadership as one of those inevitable things that “go wrong” in a large dynamic society, and Trump has no clue where to turn. The virus is not on him. The response will be, like no other, and for the first time in his life where his screw-ups will truly kill.

Trump always had something to say when unseen challenges arose under Obama, always something stupid, superficial and something said all-too easily by someone who didn’t have to worry about whether the response worked or not, probably didn’t care.

Typical Trump, back in the Ebola period:

Obama just appointed an Ebola Czar with zero experience in the medical area and zero experience in infectious disease control. A TOTAL JOKE!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 17, 2014

Did Ebola spread throughout the United States? I am having trouble remembering, so perhaps that indicates that it didn’t. Indeed it did not. Whatever Obama did, it seems to have worked.

Of course, Trump’s first official response was to put someone in place without any experience in the “medical area” and zero experience in infectious disease control, Mike Pence. Ironically, if one were to state that Pence had experience with an epidemic as governor in dealing with AIDS, he actually helped ensure needless deaths because Pence wouldn’t listen to people with experience in the “medical area” and wouldn’t engage a clean needle program proven to work.

Regardless, it is critical to note that one need not appoint a person from the “medical area” to lead the charge in organizing the government response. Ideally you get someone who has experience in both, government and infectious disease. But, the most critical qualities one looks for is someone willing to listen to the recommendations made by professionals, willing to carry that advice out, and the experience and effectiveness to actually ensure that the advice does get carried out as best as possible.

As said above, there is no question that Pence’s previous experience proves he failed the first two last time.

The last thing to note is that Trump’s willingness to throw “shit” from the sidelines proves once again that he truly has no appreciation for the complexity inherent to situations like a viral epidemic. He will be critical just to be critical when it wasn’t on “him” to get results. It shows once again that he believes he always knows best, and will always blame others, even when it’s clear he has no idea what he’s talking about.

That’s a lesson, probably one we didn’t need, one we keep getting over and over again. Maybe experience isn’t the best teacher, or at least some seem immune, which doesn’t bode well at all for the near future.

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Peace, y’all

Jason

[email protected] and on Twitter @MiciakZoom