The Wall Street Journal - 22.02.2020 - 23.02.2020

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. **** Saturday/Sunday, February 22 - 23, 2020 |A

for ethnic, racial and professional groups—who support him. But those leaders don’t fully control their own followers and constituencies. Every- one who’s a leader of any kind now is in crisis: They don’t have a complete hold on their people, and wind up fol- lowing them as often as leading them. The followers and constituencies— they want to be won over; they want to back you as much as the boss does, but you have to give them the ratio- nale of a solid performance. You have to give your leaders and influential friendscoverwith a good performance. Mr. Bloomberg didn’t do that. Bad news/long-shot good news: It was the worst performance in recent debate history—but if he can turn it around it will be the biggest comeback in modern primary history. What should he do now? From our Department of Unasked-For Advice: Show candor and humility. Admit he blew it and ask for another chance. His competitors were good and he was unprepared. “I tanked and I’m asking for another look, I’ll see you next week.” To me, Elizabeth Warren won the

night. She was good, hot and sharp right out of the box. Standing next to Mr. Bloomberg she tried to freak him out by constantly shooting up her arm to speak, almost waving it in his face and getting in his psychic space. It was as if she was saying, “You nap, buddy, while I show you who’s in charge. Go play possum and see how it works with Sugar Ray.” Ms. Warren is a bit of a mystery too—a great political athlete whose candidacy the past six months lost steam. But she is a highly disciplined performer and she has thought it through. She took off the table the is- sue of what the female candidate wears by wearing the same uniform each day, like a guy. She took hairdos off the table by having one and never changing it. She took her age off the table by having more energy than a 40-year-old on Adderall. I always thought she’d slip into the space between Bernie the socialist and the moderates, hold on and rise. That she’d be a lefty but a less doctrinaire one. Then she fell into banning pri- vate health insurance and suddenly wasdoctrinaire. And if you want doctrinaire why not pick the real

The Best Democratic Debate in Years

power of the man who means it. This is how it unfolded: It was hands down the best presi- dential primary debate of the cycle and maybe in decades. It was rivet- ing. The veterans on stage were on fire and at the top of their game. It is being called a very bad night for Mike Bloomberg. It was not. It was a catastrophe. The only question is whether it is recoverable. Can he turn it around in the debate next week, and after? Is it possible to recover from a night so bad? The mystery is the surprise of it. What were the mayor and his aides and advisers, professionals of high caliber, thinking? He was on mute and seemed not to anticipate what was coming. Maybe they were thinking:Play against type, don’t be the entitled billionaire, shrug it off, let the others exhaust themselves with their tiny fisticuffs. In the end you’ll be the last grownup standing.If that was the strategy they mistook the moment. The Democratic base was meeting him, either for the first time or in a new way, and he had to en- gage and win them over. They also mistook the challengers, who were angry as hell. “Who is this guy to buy a party?” Bloomberg strategists think he has to kill Bernie now, before Super Tuesday. But all the other candidates think they have to killMikenow, before he makes a good impression. So there was going to be blood. You have to wade in, in a human way, and throw and take punches. No one’s above it all. There’s a bigger, more important mystery. Surely the former mayor and his men and women understood this: Through Mr. Bloomberg’s longtime targeted philanthropy, through his relationships, quiet alliances, gener- osities and personal loyalties, he has a lot of leaders—mayors, other local politicians, people who run museums and civic organizations, who speak

thing, the socialist? But Wednesday night she was full of fight, tricky and full of mind games. At one point she dodged a question on banning health insurance by accusing her competitors of dodg- ing specifics on their plans. She got away with it. That’s talent! She slammed Amy Klobuchar one minute and rescued her the next. She was playing everybody. It was kind of fab- ulous. Someone on Twitter caught her essence: “She shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.” Mr. Sanders was alive, forceful, Bernie-esque. He did nothing to harm himself with his followers, if that is possible, and tried hard to make himself look inevitable. Joe Biden came alive. Mr. Bloomberg got his Irish up. Or maybe columns like this one, saying he’s over. Anyway his Hibernian was heightened and his performance was “Reports of my death are greatly ex- aggerated.” We nod with respect. Pete Buttigieg made a mistake in patronizing Ms. Klobuchar for forget- ting the name of Mexico’s president. “Are you trying to say I’m dumb? Are you mocking me here, Pete?” He lec- tured a senator who is a generation older than he, more accomplished and a woman. It revealed a certain Eddie Haskell smarm. Later, she said to him: “You’ve memorized a bunch of talking points.” It was like Chris Christie going at Marco Rubio. The Democratic race is better with Mike Bloomberg in it. The party’s got to have that fight about socialism and start it now, however long it takes. But he and his people had better get serious. It’s not only a money game, politics, it is a human game. But the debate was a reminder: You never know what’s going to happen. You make your guess but you never know. The surprise of politics—it’s a thing that can still make you feel ro- mantic about it.

Mike Bloomberg at Wednesday’s Democratic debate in Las Vegas.

MIKE BLAKE/REUTERS

I

f you love national politics and
follow it closely, there’s always
the debate you imagine in your
head and the one that later
happens on the screen. Before
Wednesday’s Democratic debate I
made a list of the bare, bottom-line
message I thought each candidate
had to deliver.
Mike Bloomberg:You can stomach
me.
Bernie Sanders:You can stomach
socialism.
I tried to imagine how each would
deliver it. For Mr. Bloomberg:I’m a
businessman. I was mayor of New
York. I am a liberal in every way but
I’m not insane. I’ve got the resources

to meet and surpass Donald Trump’s
fundraising powerhouse. I’m not
fancy and I’m no poet, but I can lead
and I can win. You’re right I can’t buy
the nomination. That’s why I’m here
on the trail every day, asking for your
support.His affect: up for the battle,
happy to be in the fight.
For Mr. Sanders:You know there’s
something wrong with the economic
system and has been a long time. The
inequality is wild, the injustice all
around us—you can feel it, and it’s
cowardice to say there’s nothing we
can do about it.In his affect:I’m the
last lion. You know my roar and you
know something else—I have the

Veteran candidates were

on fire and at the top of

their game. Can newcomer

Mike Bloomberg recover?

DECLARATIONS By Peggy Noonan

OPINION

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The Hockey Team That Beat the Soviets—and the 1970s Malaise

I

t wasn’t at all clear on Feb. 22,
1980, that America would win
the Cold War. One could make a
case that the bad guys had us on the
ropes. It was even harder to believe
that U.S. amateurs could prevent the
Soviet hockey machine from claim-
ing its fifth straight Olympic gold
medal. But the U.S. kids pulled off
the greatest upset in sports history
and inspired Americans to believe
that we could beat the commies out-
side the rink, too.
Sometimes a game is just a game.
But the U.S. hockey team’s 4-3 Olym-
pic victory in Lake Placid, N.Y.,
brought relief and joy to a country
in desperate need of good news. And
it affirmed that the 1970s really
were over.
During that nightmarish decade,
the Soviet empire had expanded
while America suffered through
Vietnam, Watergate, runaway infla-
tion and an energy shortage.
Seven months before the hockey
teams met at Lake Placid, President
Jimmy Carter postponed a scheduled
address to the nation for 10 days
and then finally appeared on televi-
sion to announce, “I realize more
than ever that as president I need
your help.” He added that America
was suffering from “a crisis of confi-
dence. It is a crisis that strikes at
the very heart and soul and spirit of
our national will.”
The president reported that he
had been soliciting advice from vari-
ous citizens, including one man who
told him, “If you lead, Mr. President,
we will follow.” Four days after the
speech, Soviet-backed communists
seized power in Nicaragua.
That same month in Colorado,
current and former college hockey
players were focused on the more
mundane task of trying out for the
U.S. Olympic team coached by Herb
Brooks.
Brooks had decided that he
wasn’t going to select the best play-
ers, but rather the 20 young men
best able to contribute to team suc-
cess. One player who made the cut

was Rob McClanahan, who recently described his experience for a web- site called The Rink Live. He remem- bers Brooks saying, “We may not be the best team, but we’re going to be the best-conditioned team.” The training was arduous, but Mr. McClanahan recalls it as fun because Brooks demanded unselfish play. “If you were open,” says Mr. McClana- han, “you knew you were going to get the puck.” The victory was an upset, but it was no fluke. Brooks wanted a team with both the stamina and the toughness to beat the Soviets. So in the months before the Olympics he ran his young squad through a seem- ingly endless exhibition schedule of more than 60 games, featuring both European finesse teams and North American brawlers. “We were a good team who learned how to battle against guys who liked to throw a few punches once in a while,” Mr. McClanahan tells The Rink Live. Once the Olympic tournament be- gan, the American team staged a se- ries of comeback victories. They were by now the best-conditioned team in the world. Nobody could

skate with them in the final period. In a 2015 interview for this news- paper, sportscaster Al Michaels told me that the team was so inspiring that it briefly distracted speed skater Eric Heiden from his own suc- cessful quest for five gold medals at Lake Placid. “We had sneaked him into one of the games,” Mr. Michaels

recalled. “He couldn’t sleep, he was so excited. He said it was the greatest thing he’d ever seen. He’s in the middle of winning five gold medals and he was more exulted about the efforts of the U.S. team than about himself.” That went for the entire country. By the time the Americans faced the Soviets, cheering crowds were as- sembling in living rooms and bars nationwide. Before the game Brooks

looked around the locker room at each member of his team and said, “You are born to be a player. You are meant to be here. This moment is yours.” Hal Bock of the Associated Press reported what happened next: “With roars of ‘USA! USA! USA!’ ringing in their ears, America’s comeback kids rode the red-hot, 36-save goaltend- ing of Jim Craig to a sensational victory that set off a wild celebration, first on the ice and then all over this Olympic town.” With yet another comeback, the Americans had won 4-3 on a late goal from captain Mike Eruzione. AP colleague Wick Temple later admitted: “The old rule that there should be no cheering in the press box was broken at Lake Placid.... Everybody was on a hockey high. And we soon found ourselves dash- ing out of the newsroom to cover the happy mob that snake-danced down Main Street.” The actor Kurt Russell, who bril- liantly portrayed Brooks in the 2004 movie “Miracle,” recalls that “beat- ing that particular Soviet team at that particular time at that particu-

lar event created a sense of delirium in the U.S.” He adds, “Herb Brooks and those playersearnedan upset so improbable that it felt like a miracle.” The Americans next beat Finland for the gold medal, prompting leading scorer Mark Johnson to observe, “I’m sure the 20 guys can’t believe it.They’llprobablywakeuptomor- row morning and still won’t believe it.” But it really did happen on that day in 1980. Brooks led, and they followed him to victory. Mr. Johnson, now the winningest coach in NCAA women’s hockey history, says that in the era before smartphones and social media, the 1980 team was playing in a small town in upstate New York and didn’t realize the national impact. “It still amazes each one of us how it reso- nated,” he recalls. “We got people to smile at a time when there wasn’t a lot to smile about.”

Mr. Freeman is assistant editor of the Journal’s editorial page and author of the weekday Best of the Web column online.

By James Freeman

‘[Coach] Herb Brooks and those playersearned an upset so improbable that it felt like a miracle.’

How Not to Panic Over the Wuhan Virus (or Russia)

If you’re looking for something to be on the edge of your seat about, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will start testing people with flu symptoms in five cities (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle and San Francisco) to see if the Wu- han coronavirus has slipped around our defenses and taken root in the U.S. Or they could just wait for Ber- nie Sanders to come down with something. A 78-year-old man with a heart condition will be conducting five or six public events a day in coming weeks. In fact, he and his

fellow Democratic candidates ought to be monitored as virtual blotters for any transmissible respiratory ail- ments that may be at large. The relevant data points will have changed by the time you read this, but Iran discovered its first two cases this week and then announced both had died. Now four have died, likely indicating that Iran has hundreds of undiagnosed infections. A German study identified two symptomless carriers among 114 travelers repatriated from China. The chances that symptomless carriers are roam- ing Japan are not small after dozens of citizens were cleared to depart from a sloppily maintained quaran- tine aboard a cruise ship on which hundreds had been infected. One of America’s foremost experts, the University of Minnesota’s Michael Osterholm, was quoted by Bloomberg News as saying the “next three weeks are going to be critical.” The markets have figured it out, judging by Thursday’s and Friday’s sell-offs. Ditto officials around the world, including a French health minister and most of the top U.S. government experts. An effort is palpably afoot to let the public know that a global pandemic (which is not the same as the end of the world) may be in the offing. Beijing will not be their role model. China had the advantage of the fact, or at least the theory, that a new virus originated in a specific place and might be contained there. Whether the premise was right is doubtful. If Beijing knew in Decem- ber what it knows today, it might have followed the strategy most Western societies will follow: mini- mize the lockdowns and put more weight on warning citizens, espe-

cially the elderly, how to reduce their risk. The operative strategy is called social distancing or social mitiga- tion: Wash your hands. Avoid public places. Expect, in most cases, in- fection to be unpleasant but not debilitating. A respiratory virus that can be spread easily, and by people who are not experiencing symptoms (if that’s the case here), is likely to spread globally. Trade has not stopped.

Ships and planes are still manned by crews who must be in contact with people at both ends. Screening of travelers based on whether they have been in China is running out of usefulness in countries that have lo- cally generated transmission. Hap- pily for the part of the world in which spring is looming, even a few weeks of delay might have consider- able payoff if this virus, like other respiratory viruses, spreads less easily in warmer and more humid weather. The behavior of the Wuhan virus remains subject to conflicting reports. Transmission is not well understood. The reported death rate of roughly 2%, as every outside author- ity has noted, is likely inflated by China’s inability to diagnose and count thousands of mild cases. In the U.S., hospitals are gearing up for a possible influx of patients. If

Americans keep their heads and go about their business while respect- ing the fact that an especially tricky flu (though it isn’t actually influ- enza) is in their midst, the country will be fine. Covid-19, to give the disease its new proper name, is one more of life’s hazards that capable adults should be able to manage. iii In a separate but not unrelated story, Donald Trump is not wrong to be concerned about his intelligence agencies reporting to Congress that the Kremlin intends to aid his re- election. We are idiots if we think the Russians are asking themselves what they can do to advance Trump’s cause. The Kremlin is asking how to keep American politics roiled and distrustful. To make an obvious point, in the 1940s the U.S. had an outcome in mind when it meddled in Western European politics: to keep the Communists out of power. To the Kremlin today, the choice between a Democrat and Re- publican isn’t really much of a choice at all (though Mr. Trump does seem to be succeeding where others have failed in scuttling Vladi- mir Putin’s dearest project, a new pipeline to siphon money out of Eu- rope in return for Russian gas). The real upside of Russia’s meddling comes from keeping Americans un- reasonably and unnecessarily poi- soned against each other. Unfortunately such consider- ations are woefully secondary for some media figures who have rat- ings and personal “brands” to consider, not to mention certain former U.S. officials who may be hoping to avoid legal liability for prior conduct in office by damaging the current administration.

Governments are starting to use the word pandemic so publics can be ready to protect themselves.

BUSINESS WORLD By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.

The Wall Street Journal - 22.02.2020 - 23.02.2020

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