OK, we can all agree. Egregious mistakes were made and many people are dying needlessly as a result.
But who made those mistakes is a matter of dispute. The left blames the right, the right blames China and the World Health Organization. Governors blame the president, and he blames them right back.
Eventually, those leaders who failed to respond forcefully to the coronavirus will be called to account. But now is absolutely the wrong moment for finger-pointing and blame-shifting.
We’re deep in the throes of an unprecedented national emergency and we have plenty to do to pull ourselves out of it. With thousands of Americans dying of the virus each week, this is the time for leaders across the country to send clear, focused, forward-looking messages providing accurate information about how many people have been tested, are sick and have died, and explaining exactly what is being asked of us and why changing our behavior is so important. We need more testing, more protective gear, more medical equipment, and we need our leaders to pull together regardless of their party. An obsessive focus on blame is an unwelcome and unhealthy distraction.
President Donald Trump, not surprisingly, is the worst offender. At his circus-like daily news briefings he flails around inarticulately, ceaselessly praising his own actions and attacking those of others. On Monday, he actually said: “Everything we did was right,” even as the number of dead in the U.S. climbed above 23,000. The following day, he announced theatrically that he was cutting U.S. funding for the World Health Organization in the middle of the crisis for “severely mismanaging and covering up” the COVID-19 crisis and putting “political correctness above lifesaving.”