We thought George Walker Bush was an idiot. Compared to Donald John Trump, the Texan now looks downright professorial.
The United States of America's national pandemic strategy was initiated by non-other than George W, a man widely derided as being an incompetent buffoon.
Bush hadn’t been alerted to any new threat, it was because he had read John Barry’s book, ‘The Great Influenza’ about the flu pandemic of 1918.
Imagine Donald Trump reading a book? Of course, it’s easy to make fun of Trump. In the BC era, (Before Coronavirus) it had become something of a pastime to lampoon the failings of elected representatives.
With the vast reach and power of global corporations, there was a growing sense that politicians were irrelevant and borderline impotent.
Covid-19 has changed all that. As the body count around the globe has soared, we have been forcibly reminded that politics matter and politicians matter. The piling coffins are showing us that our political choices and our leadership choices can be the difference between life and death.
To illustrate this point, it’s worth comparing the US and Germany.
On the 26th of February, President Trump announced that the outbreak would soon be “down to close to zero”. On the 27th of February, he said the threat would, “like a miracle, evaporate”.
The next day, there were 48 confirmed cases in Germany and 60 in the US.
Six weeks later and America’s death toll of 11,000 and rising is almost six times higher than that of Germany.
Not only was Germany able to respond more effectively to the crisis, their superior health system left them better placed to take care of their population.
Germany has 8.1 hospital beds per 1,000 of the population. America, the greatest country in the world, has 2.8. In Germany, health care is free. In America, it’s not.
Not to worry. Who needs a decent healthcare system when Donald Trump is in the White House?
On the 24th of March, Trump still refused to accept the gravity of the situation. His primary concern was that the economic impact would harm his chances of being re-elected.
He told Fox News: “You are going to lose a number of people to the flu, but you are going to lose more people by putting a country into a massive recession or depression.”
In a later interview the same day, he told Americans that on Easter Sunday “you’ll have packed churches all over the country”.
Then last week, in a shameless u-turn, he announced that if the death rate was contained to between 100,000 to 250,000 it will be proof that he’s done “a very good job”.
The German chancellor Angela Merkel thinks long and hard before committing to any course of action.
The daughter of a pastor, who was raised in East Germany, Merkel studied physics at Leipzig University and earned a doctorate in quantum chemistry in Berlin.
Working as a quantum chemist at the East Germany Academy of Sciences (across the road from a Stasi barracks), Merkel once co-authored a paper entitled: “Vibrational Properties of Surface Hydroxyls: Nonempirical Model Calculations Including Anharmonicities.”
A profile of Merkel in The New Yorker said she was “trained to see the invisible world in particle and waves. She learned to approach problems methodically, drawing comparisons, running scenarios, weighing risks, anticipating reactions, and then, even after making a decision, letting it sit for a while before acting.”
While the Germans have a scientist in charge, Stuart Stevens, a long-time Republican and Trump critic, believes a “sales guy” is in the Oval Room.
Stevens told The Washington Post: “He wants to get the sale – that’s it. He wants to sell you the undercoating of your car, and it’s not his problem if the car breaks driving off the lot.”
But that comparison is unfair. It’s unfair to dodgy salesmen.
Because even the most corrupt retailer has to deliver something. Trump delivers nothing.
He’s the self-proclaimed ‘wartime’ president who dodged the draft for Vietnam five times.
He’s also the self-proclaimed deal maker. But he’s not very good at it. He promised to cut a deal with Iran. It never happened. He promised to make a deal with North Korea. It never happened. He promised to build a border wall with Mexico. It has yet to happen.
Trump doesn’t work in sales. He works in advertising.
He peddles dreams and aspirations, quick fixes and easy solutions.
“I play to people’s fantasies,” he told his ghost-writer for ‘The Art of the Deal’.
Anyone who thinks Americans are stupid because they voted for Trump is very much mistaken. Chances are you have probably made multiple online purchases from a huckster who copies his methods. The beauty, fashion and fitness industries are like an online homage to Trumpism.
But if you get conned online, it only costs you money.
Nearly 63 million Americans made Donald Trump - a coward, a liar and a glorified con-artist - the 45th President of the United States of America. It might seem like it only cost them a vote, but for thousands and thousands of innocent people, it’s going to cost them their lives.
