Alex Brandon/AP Photo
As always, it’s all about him. That has never been more evident or more jarring.
We are in the midst of one of the greatest presidential failures in American history, one made of delay and delusion and incompetence; indeed, it appears that no one is really managing the coronavirus epidemic, least of all Donald Trump. Alongside this management vacuum is another void where the president ought to be. It concerns a different kind of leadership, one not about overseeing the operations of government but about something less material but still vital.
At a time like this the country wants the president to guide us, to reassure us, to understand us, to bind us together, and strengthen our resolve. There may never have been a president less capable of it than Donald Trump.
That’s not just because of who he is at his core—sometimes less a human being than a walking collection of character flaws and pathologies. It’s also because of how he conceives of who we are, and what he should offer us.
The coronavirus pandemic may be the most universally felt historical event any of us have experienced. So much of the other world-shaping events of our lives—the September 11 attacks, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the fall of the Berlin Wall—directly affected some of us, while the rest watched on TV. But save for a small number of Americans living deep in the wilderness, we’ve all had our lives altered to one degree or another by the pandemic and the economic crisis that has followed.
Even in less catastrophic moments, other presidents have understood that part of their role was to speak directly to the substance of our shared experience, to show they understood not just what people were going through but how it felt.
Trump, who seems literally incapable of empathy, simply has no capacity to do that. Someone might write for him some prepared remarks that at least acknowledge what it’s like to live in this moment, but you can always tell when he’s reading words he neither appreciates nor believes. His delivery becomes monotonic and perfunctory, as he plainly can’t wait to get to the end so he can reach the more comfortable ground of attacking his enemies and berating reporters.
You may have noticed that Trump almost never speaks of the victims of COVID-19. He doesn’t tell any of their stories, about who they were or the families that now have to live without them. He doesn’t talk about the difficulties of social distancing, except to insist that it should end. The pain so many Americans are now experiencing is something he would prefer we not think about.
Meanwhile, he continues to be obsessed with the TV ratings of his nightly briefings, as though it’s fine if another 2,000 Americans died today from COVID-19 as long as he got more viewers than “The Bachelor.” That’s when he’s not touting miracle cures, whether hydroxychloroquine or injecting yourself with Lysol, because a miracle is the only way he can rescue this crisis from his own bungling, then claim to be our savior.
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Through it all has been his relentless and tone-deaf optimism, from “We have it under control. It's going to be just fine” (January 22) to “One day it's like a miracle, it will disappear” (February 27) to “Anybody that wants a test can get a test” (March 6) to “Just stay calm. It will go away” (March 10) to “We've done a great job because we acted quickly” (March 13) to “I think Easter Sunday — you'll have packed churches all over our country” (March 24).
It’s as if Winston Churchill told the British people in 1940, “We’re doing great, and soon the Nazi bombing campaign will be reduced to zero. It’ll be like a miracle.”
Trump seems particularly peeved that his nightly performances are getting poor reviews. The problem is not just that he treats them like one of his campaign rallies, spewing misinformation and attacking his perceived enemies. It’s also that, as always, it’s all about him. That has never been more evident or more jarring.
When presidents carry out their more ceremonial duties and give thought to the effects their rhetoric can have, they often attempt to tell us something about ourselves and connect us to each other and the country. It’s something strong orators like Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama did again and again: Tell stories about America that draw a circle around the audience, making them not just observers but participants in a common endeavor and the motion of history.
For Trump—who accepted his party’s nomination in 2016 saying “I alone can fix it”—the very idea of placing agency in the hands of the country as a whole is almost incomprehensible. His primary and eternal desire is to be the object of our gaze. In turn, our only job is to behold him and applaud his greatness. He is the one who acts; the rest of us are supposed to be spectators.
Yet now what is so obvious is his inaction. According to one report after another, Trump isn’t actually doing all that much to manage the government’s response to the crisis; he spends his days brooding, looking for those of insufficient loyalty he can purge, and above all watching television. When he does emerge each evening, he gives Americans none of what they yearn for.
Try to imagine what a president who understood the ceremonial, emotional, and rhetorical aspects of leadership—Barack Obama, or Ronald Reagan, or even George W. Bush—would be doing right now. Instead of denying or distracting from the losses we’ve already suffered, they’d share that pain. They’d give hope that the crisis will end not just insisting it will but by showing a way forward. They’d emphasize that just as we’re enduring this together, we’ll emerge together.
When he ran for president, Trump repeatedly claimed that at some later date he’d become “presidential,” which he appeared to think involved being dull and somber, or at least not spending all his time tossing off juvenile insults (“I will be so presidential. You will be so bored”). Even after taking office he continued to claim that he would get around to being presidential—just not yet.
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At moments of crisis it is particularly clear that presidential behavior includes speaking to Americans’ fear and grief and hope, sharing it all with us and bolstering our resolve. If it wasn’t clear already, by now there’s no more doubt: Donald Trump just doesn’t have it in him.
