FRIDAy, MARCH 27 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST eZ re A21
FRIDAY Opinion
W
hen a crisis hits the United
States, the country’s general in-
stinct is to rally around the flag
and wish the best for its leaders.
That’s probably why President Trump has
seen his approval ratings rise, even though
he has had a delayed and fitful approach to
this pandemic. But at some point, we
Americans must look at the facts and
recognize an uncomfortable reality. The
United States is on track to have the worst
outbreak of coronavirus among wealthy
countries, largely because of the ineffective-
ness of its government. This is the new face
of American exceptionalism.
The United States now has the highest
number of cases of covid-19 in the world,
outstripping both China and Italy. The first
line of defense against the disease is testing.
On this key metric, the U.S. experience has
been a fiasco: We started late, using a faulty
test, and never quite recovered.
Trump’s claim that “anybody that wants
a test can get a test” is a cruel hoax. Access
to tests remains much worse than in most
advanced countries. His assertion that the
United States has tested more people than
South Korea is nonsense because it doesn’t
take into account that South Korea has less
than one-sixth America’s population. Per
capita, South Korea has done five times
more testing than the United States, as of
Wednesday. But forget about South Korea.
Italy, a country not known for the smooth
workings of its government, has tested four
times as many per capita as the United
States.
The United States has shortages of every-
thing — v entilators, masks, gloves, gowns —
and no national emergency system to
provide new supplies fast. New York
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) says his state
will need 40,000 beds for critical care. It h as
only 3,000. That means many patients will
die simply because they lack access to care
that is available under normal circumstanc-
es. Not even three weeks into this pandem-
ic, health-care workers are reusing masks,
sewing their own and pleading for dona-
tions. In a searing essay in the Atlantic, Ed
Yong writes, “Rudderless, blindsided, le-
thargic, and uncoordinated, America has
mishandled the COVID-19 crisis to a sub-
stantially worse degree than what every
health expert I’ve spoken with had feared.”
Why did this happen? It’s easy to blame
Trump, and the president has been inept
from the start. But there is a much larger
story behind this fiasco. The United States
is paying the price today for decades of
defunding government, politicizing inde-
pendent agencies, fetishizing local control,
and demeaning and disparaging govern-
ment workers and bureaucrats.
This was not always how it was. America
has historically prized limited but effective
government. In Federalist 70, Alexander
Hamilton wrote, “A government ill execut-
ed, whatever it may be in theory, must be, in
practice, a bad government.” President
Franklin D. Roosevelt created the modern
federal bureaucracy, which was strikingly
lean and efficient. In recent decades, as the
scope of government has increased, the
bureaucracy has been starved and made
increasingly dysfunctional. In the 1 950s, t he
percentage of federal civilian employees
compared with total employment w as above
5 percent. It has dropped to under 2 percent
today, despite a population that is twice as
large and a gross domestic product that is
seven times higher (adjusting for inflation).
Federal agencies are understaffed but
overburdened with mountains of regula-
tions and politicized mandates and rules,
giving officials little power and discretion.
The Food and Drug Administration’s cum-
bersome rules and bureaucracy — which
have proved a huge problem in this case —
are j ust one e xample a mong hundreds. The
scholar who has long studied this topic,
Paul Light, n otes t hat under President John
F. Kennedy, the Cabinet departments had
17 “ layers” of hierarchy. By the time Trump
took office, there were a staggering 71 lay-
ers. Both political parties have contributed
to the problem, making the federal govern-
ment a caricature of bureaucratic ineffi-
ciency.
Most o f these dysfunctions are replicated
at the state and local levels with their own
smaller agencies. The challenge of creating
a national strategy is complicated by the
reality that the true power in public health
lies with 2,684 state, local and tribal
systems, each jealously guarding its inde-
pendence. We like to celebrate American
federalism as the flourishing of local de-
mocracy. But this crazy patchwork quilt of
authority is proving a nightmare when
tackling an epidemic that knows no bor-
ders, and where any locality with a weak
response will allow the infection to keep
spreading elsewhere. What happens on
Florida’s beaches doesn’t stay on Florida’s
beaches.
It’s an easy cop-out to say the United
States can’t mirror China’s dictatorship.
The governments that are handling this
pandemic effectively include democracies
such as South Korea, Ta iwan and Germany.
Many of the best practices employed in
places such as Singapore and Hong Kong
are not tyrannical but smart — testing,
contact tracing and isolation. But all these
places have governments that are well-
funded, efficient and responsive. In today’s
world, with problems that spill across
borders at lightning speed, “well executed
government” is what makes a country truly
exceptional.
[email protected]
FAREED ZAKARIA
In one way,
we’re no longer
exceptional
BY ROBERT KAGANW
e’ve got a health crisis and
an economic crisis. The
only thing missing is a
foreign policy crisis. So
far, this may just be good luck. It
happens occasionally in history that
natural and man-made catastrophes
converge to create even bigger
d isasters.
The 1918 influenza pandemic came
as Europe was still reeling from four
years of war. Societies were ravaged,
governments were dysfunctional,
millions were displaced, hungry,
without shelter, on the move. Who
knows how much worse the pandem-
ic was because of the conditions creat-
ed by the war? And who knows how
much more difficult it was to recover
from the war, psychologically and
politically, as well as physically, be-
cause of the pandemic?
A more striking example of con-
verging catastrophes came in the late
1920s and early 1930s. The U.S. stock
market crashed in October 1929.
Ei ght months later, as the market
continued to fall, much of the country
was hit by the worst drought in North
America in a thousand years.
Droughts struck again three times in
the 1930s, displacing a half-million
Americans and deepening the Great
Depression.
But all that was just the beginning.
In September 1930, Germans went to
the polls and made Adolf Hitler’s
National Socialists the second-largest
party in the Reichstag. A year later,
Japan invaded and occupied the Chi-
nese province of Manchuria, shock-
ing a world that had not seen a
cross-border aggression of that size
since 1914. Te n months after that, the
Nazis became the largest party in
Germany and Hitler was on his way to
being named German chancellor in
January 1933. Everyone knows the
rest of the story.The notable feature of the 1930s
geopolitical crises that erupted on top
of economic and natural disasters:
The groundwork for them had been
laid during the mostly peaceful and
prosperous decade of the 1920s.
The one power capable of sustain-
ing the peace and bringing some
measure of order and stability to both
Europe and East Asia had chosen
quite determinedly not to take on the
burden of such responsibilities. The
United States had emerged from
World War I richer and stronger than
all the rest of the great powers com-
bined. But many Americans, disillu-
sioned by the war, were determined to
reject all overseas commitments, no
matter how small or limited. They
pulled up the drawbridge — closing
the door to immigration and impos-
ing ever-higher tariffs on foreign
trade — and minimized overseas in-
volvement while maximizing Ameri-
can freedom of action.
This insular nationalist approach
helped drive the rest of the world in
the same direction. Other countries
raised tariff walls in retaliation. The
League of Nations was all but inca-
pacitated by the United States’ persis-
tent refusal to engage with it. U.S. re-
lations with even Britain and France,
its allies in the Great War, were
strained and almost hostile. Ties with
Japan took a blow when Congress
passed the Asian Exclusion Act in
1924, banning Japanese immigration
completely.
The result was a world in which
every nation went its own way. While
mouthing platitudes about “outlaw-
ing war” and signing toothless peace
pacts such as the Kellogg-Briand
agreement of 1928, the great powers
were less and less inclined to work
together to preserve the peace, to
strengthen a global economy or to
establish effective mechanisms of in-
ternational cooperation. When Japan
invaded Manchuria, U.S. officialslooked to the League of Nations and
then to the British for help containing
Japanese ambitions, only to find that
the League was impotent and the
British uninterested, thanks largely
to a decade of American neglect.
The lesson ought to be clear
enough. It i s when times are good and
no grave threats are visible on the
horizon that preparations for hard
times need to be made. The time to
invest in alliance relationships is
when they are least obviously needed.
The time to strengthen a fluid global
economy, with relatively open trade
and capable international economic
institutions, is when the benefits are
least clear. Then, when the disasters
unexpectedly but inevitably come,
the system is stronger and more
resilient, there is more trust in the
bank with other peoples, more inter-
national capacity to avoid compound-
ing unavoidable disasters with those
that could have been avoided.
Perhaps America’s luck will hold
and we will avoid a geopolitical crisis
this time. But we have certainly not
put ourselves and the world in the
best position either to prevent or to
manage one. Our relationships with
allies are poor. We have picked fights
with various potential adversaries
that may or may not have been wise or
justified, but we have not at the same
time effectively deterred them from
striking out if they choose. We have
waged trade wars against allies and
adversaries alike. Overall, we have
weakened the fabric of the interna-
tional order that we created after
World War II and that served us and
others well through innumerable cri-
ses. Let’s hope we don’t reap the same
harvest as our forebears.robert Kagan is a senior fellow at the
Brookings Institution and a contributing
columnist for the Post. His latest book is
“the Jungle Grows Back: America and Our
Imperiled World.”The only thing missing
is a foreign policy crisis
MAry AltAffer/ASSOCIAteD PreSS
Women in New York wear face masks and scarves to cover their mouths and noses on March 20.nation, propelled initially by the enthu-
siasm of African American voters, and
then most everyone else in the party,
because he appeared to have the right
stuff — namely a seeming ability to beat
President Trump. But a nagging ques-
tion remained as Biden disappeared
into lockdown in Delaware: Is this gar-
rulous white-haired gent perhaps out of
sync with a hyper-anxious nation in
quarantine? Or is his Irish-grandpa
manner just what the country needs?
Trump has often been at his worst
during his near-daily coronavirus brief-
ings. To his detractors, he looks vain,
petty and sometimes downright deceit-
ful. But it shouldn’t be surprising that
even with these embarrassing perfor-
mances, Gallup polling this week re-
corded Trump’s highest approval rating
ever, with 49 percent support and
60 percent endorsing his handling of the
pandemic threat. Any president com-
mands loyalty in crisis; he’s the head of
state, who symbolizes the country itself;
we rally round as an act of solidarity.
But Trump’s current boost is reactive;
it doesn’t mean that voters will reelect
him as chief of our national tribe. Yes,
hopefully, America does feel more like
one tribe now, a country where we’re all
in it together. That’s one of the Demo-
crats’ challenges: to make sure that
identity politics doesn’t get i n the way of
the politics of collective survival. Anoth-
er test for Democrats is to make sure
their critique of Trump isn’t so reflexive
and vitriolic that it turns off folks who
just want to get through this mess.
Who symbolizes the values of a nation
that will triumph over the coronavirus?
Atop our list of heroes these days are theW
hen America wakes up from
its enforced hibernation
sometime later this year, will
Joe Biden and the Democrats
look like the team that can manage a
transformed post-coronavirus country
most effectively?
The Democrats will resume cam-
paigning with a discordant but perhaps
beneficial mix of candidate and base.
They h ave a genially reassuring, 77-year-
old former vice president standing atop
a party whose progressive ideas for
health care and guaranteed income fit
the nation’s needs better now than they
perhaps seemed to even a month ago.
Did the Democrats stumble into the
right combination of old and new?
But here’s a caution for the Democrats
about coronavirus politics. Americans
want calm and competence, but they
also want decisive leadership. When
people are scared (and the fear factor is
just beginning), they want to know that
their families will be safe. I’ve seen that
phenomenon in war-ravaged countries
around the world: Frightened people
seek the protection of the strongest
militia in town.
The Democrats certainly can be the
haven of sanity and expertise in this
storm. They’ve got those soft subjects
covered. But do they have the toughness
to power America through a political
landscape that’s very different from
what it looked like on Super Tuesday,
which already seems a lifetime ago? T his
strong leadership style, the kind that can
effectively manage a war economy, is
what the Democrats need to sharpen
during the hiatus.
Biden has coasted toward the nomi-doctors and nurses who are risking their
lives to keep patients alive; the truck
drivers who are bringing food to our
grocery stores; and the checkout clerks
who show up faithfully for work each
day so that we all can stay fed.
Among our heroes, too, are the ex-
perts to whom we turn for their clear,
competent guidance. When people look
back on this time, I suspect they’ll
remember Anthony S. Fauci and
D eborah Birx more fondly than the man
in front of them at the lectern (who
seemed disappointed that a political
rival didn’t get sick).
The Democrats should aim to be the
party that celebrates working-class he-
roes and scientists alike: the party of
faithful nurses, firefighters, truckers
and clerks; and the experts’ party, too,
that promotes fact-based climate sci-
ence and global public health. There’s n o
contradiction; we’re all in service of a
larger cause.
And the Democrats should be the
fairness party as well. That’s their spe-
cial advantage now. We can all see that
we need a better, fairer national health
system than the disorganized hospital-
by-hospital free-for-all we have. People
also understand, better than ever, that
when crisis hits, everyone needs some
income security.
The coronavirus could kill the age of
populism, wrote Walter Russell Mead in
the Wall Street Journal this week. But
that won’t happen unless Biden and the
Democrats can show they have the guts
to get the job done — that they are the
smart, tough managers who can keep
the country alive and well.
Twitter: @IgnatiusPostDAVID IGNATIUSWho can lead a post-coronavirus America?
I
t’s hard to focus on right now, but this
November we’re going to have a
presidential election that may be the
most important in our lifetimes.
How, e xactly?
All we can say for certain, in this plague
year, is that we won’t do it the way we
expected. The election will take place in
the shadow of a pandemic that has affect-
ed every state in the union, killed more
than 1,000 Americans thus far and dra-
matically changed how we live and work.
We’re going to have to make this up as we
go along.
Just three weeks ago, after the Super
Tuesday primaries, it looked as though w e
would know by now who the D emocratic
challenger to President Trump would be.
Former vice president Joe Biden’s lead in
pledged delegates over Sen. Bernie
S anders (I-Vt.) was on track to become
mathematically insurmountable, and
Sanders would almost surely have had to
suspend or end his campaign. It was
supposed to be all over but the shouting.
But because of covid-19, potentially
decisive primaries in Ohio, Georgia and
other states have been postponed. At this
point, with most Americans asked or
ordered to practice social distancing, it is
unclear when it will be possible to resume
the primary process — o r how that can be
done safely.
So the Democratic race is in suspended
animation. Biden looks like the certain
nominee, but this status has not been
made official — and Sanders has not
dropped out. There was supposed to be
another debate between the two candi-
dates in April, but the Democratic Na-
tional Committee has not yet scheduled
it. Sanders has said he is ready and willing
to participate; Biden, perhaps under-
standably, has said that “I think we’ve had
enough debates.”The primaries, when they resume, will
probably look and feel different. There
will probably be much more of an empha-
sis on mail-in voting, which will make it
hard or impossible for officials to report
results on primary nights. That would
mean no victory or concession speeches,
which is just as well, since those ritualis-
tic appearances would seem pointless in
the absence of wildly elated or sorely
disappointed crowds. And crowds of any
kind, of course, are at t his point out of the
question.
If Sanders dropped out, all of the above
would be academic — but only for the
presidential race. State parties still need
to choose candidates for important
down-ballot contests, including Senate
and House races. Somehow, the prima-
ries have to be held.
What about the p arty c onventions? A s
of now, the Democratic Party is p lanning
to hold its convention July 13 to 16 in
Milwaukee, and the Republican Party
intends to gather Aug. 24 to 27 in Char-
lotte. That’s the idea, at least — and
perhaps by summer it will be safe to
return to politics as usual. But what if it
isn’t?
Anyone who has been on the crowded,
bustling floor of a major-party conven-
tion knows that even the most diabolical
Bond villain could hardly design a more
perfect environment to guarantee the
spread of a dangerous pathogen. Attend-
ees come from around the country and
spend four days in the closest proximity,
sitting cheek by jowl, squeezing past one
another, glad-handing with other delega-
tions, cheering and chanting and other-
wise expelling whatever happens to be
lurking in their respiratory tracts.
Normally, that’s not a serious problem
— s ome people might go h ome with colds
that they end up passing on to family and
friends. But this year? Seriously?
And then the sprint to November is
supposed to begin. In a best-case scenar-
io, the novel coronavirus that causes
covid-19 may turn out to be seasonal, like
influenza, and new infections could natu-
rally decline during warm-weather
months. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the
National Institute of Allergy and Infec-
tious Diseases, said Wednesday he be-
lieves this may be the case. T hat means we
might get a respite. But it also means,
Fauci said, that we should prepare for a
second wave of infection and transmis-
sion when the weather again turns cold.
According to the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, flu season usual-
ly begins in October. If covid-19 follows
that schedule, that second wave would
begin washing over the nation just before
Election Day.
We have to start imagining a presiden-
tial campaign w ithout campaigning. Will
there be rallies? Will “pressing the flesh”
seem a dangerous bygone practice? Will
the battle take place exclusively on televi-
sion and online?
It will be challenging to hold a legiti-
mate national election in the shadow of
covid-19. The time to start planning how
to do this is now.
Twitter: @Eugene_RobinsonEUGENE ROBINSONOur election
system will be
infected
We have to start imagining
a presidential campaign
without campaigning.