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The pandemic will eventually weaken populists

Mountebank medicine

The pandemic showed that populists are no good at governing, argues Robert
Guest

POPULISTS IN POWER have handled the coronavirus ineptly. President

Donald Trump downplayed it, promoted quack cures and disparaged face

masks. Thanks partly to his incompetence, Americans were more likely to die

of covid- 1 9 than people in almost any other rich country. Curbing a pandemic

requires sober communication, patient organisation and respect for science.

Mr Trump offered none of these, which was perhaps why voters rejected him

in November.

Other nationalist-populists have performed dismally, too. Narendra Modi, India’s prime
minister, was so eager to seem tough and decisive that he failed to consider the
consequences of imposing one of the world’s tightest lockdowns on a country with so
many poor people. Millions of rural migrants in cities lost their jobs and thronged back
to the countryside, turning packed bus stations into covid-19 hotspots and spreading