Things will get worse in America before they get better. That’s the dark cloud the coronavirus has spread over our country. Great suffering has come our way before, but not often.
Dr. Scott Gottlieb, who understands the virus better than anyone except Dr. Anthony Fauci, says it should “peak” in late April or early May. That doesn’t mean we’re safe, only that the number of diagnosed cases of the coronavirus will begin to decline. The suffering, however, will continue.
The reason is the policy adopted in Washington without being explained unequivocally to the public. It involves what I call The Big Trade-off. The top priority became the battle to contain and extinguish the virus. To win that war, the economy has to be reduced almost to a standstill. From all signs, this has already been achieved, as the public is stuck at home. A surge in layoffs comes next.
Once the virus expires, the economy is expected to resume its dynamic ways. The question is how soon. That’s unknowable. But the groundwork is being laid with loans to keep businesses alive and cash to every adult.
For weeks, President Trump’s attempts to soothe the public’s fears and prevent a nationwide panic flopped. The media accused him of downgrading the situation. That wasn’t quite true. But he didn’t capture the seriousness of the viral attack either.
The president has a habit of playing into the hands of a hostile press corps. A favorite media tactic is to play up what Trump says at the expense of his actions. This amounts to judging the president more on style than substance. And as the coronavirus began to dominate the news, he gave them plenty of dubious comments to dwell on.
But Trump has now caught on to how a president should act in a perilous time. He still emcees White House press briefings, but limits his ad libs. He lets his expert aides talk. The New York Times, a leading critic of Trump, said he appears “to fully embrace the scope of the calamity, saying he saw himself as a wartime president and invoking memories of the efforts made by Americans during World War II.”
This is a big leap in press recognition. In Trump’s case, it’s the equivalent of an accolade. True, it allows the press to note the contrast with Trump’s earlier failure to grasp the dire threat to the country. The president, by the way, continues to tweet. “We are going to WIN, sooner or later,” he tweeted after several days of announcing sweeping new antivirus initiatives.
Bernie Sanders had urged Trump to “shut up” — a piece of mean-spirited but good advice. Brit Hume of Fox News tweeted this: “His WH virus task force briefings have been extensive, credible and informative. His own statements have been rambling, boastful, vague, and imprecise.”
Trump is not known for taking advice. I suspect the president is aware of Hume’s tweets because he is a prominent Fox News commentator with an open mind about Trump. Whatever the catalyst, he’s taking a high-toned, FDR-like approach. “We must sacrifice together because we are all in this together, and we will come through together,” he said.
For their part, Republicans refuse to be isolated on defense by Democrats in the war against the virus. When House Democrats loaded a bill to aid families in combating the virus with special-interest items, 40 Republicans voted against it. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell advised senators to “gag” and then vote for the bill without quibbling. The bill passed. Eight GOP senators voted no.
As luck would have it, the president is likely to gain politically from statesmanship in the crisis. He has stopped speaking at rallies so loved by his base. But those voters are locked in. His need is to appeal to suburbanites, women especially, who deserted Republican candidates in the 2018 midterm elections. Polls indicate they have yet to return to the GOP fold. Rallies don’t appeal to them, but high-mindedness does.
Trump won’t be reelected without a good chunk of them on his side in November. They have taken the same tack as the media, rebelling against Trump’s style and giving short shrift to his actual accomplishments.
Only Trump himself can change their minds. A few months of talk devoted to lofty principles, national unity, and lifting the dark cloud of the coronavirus will boost him more politically than weekly rallies and furious tweets.
Fred Barnes is a Washington Examiner senior columnist.
