The first presidential debate was bitter and brutal, leaving viewers with little to take away other than disappointment.
There was, however, a fleeting but noteworthy exchange on the question of how to respond to COVID-19. “People want their places open,” President Trump said, referring to the economy. Joe Biden immediately responded to him, “People want to be safe.”
The moment summed up nearly seven months of policy arguments about how to balance the effort of sustaining a national economy and protecting public health. It was a reminder that the public wants and needs both things to be prioritized and that the next president will have to tackle the issue well into a new year.
Moderator Chris Wallace asked Biden why he has been more reticent about opening up schools and the economy, and he didn’t have a very good answer. He basically said the government needs to give businesses money to help them pay for protective equipment in order to open, but he said nothing about the reasonableness of lockdown measures, which is the precise point of contention.
Though Biden didn’t readily embrace broad lockdowns at Tuesday’s debate, he has before and with candor. “I would shut it down, I would listen to the scientists,” Biden said back in August, referring to the country and economy. Trump hit Biden on this at the debate, rightly. There are extreme dangers to the broad lockdown approach to which Biden has committed, some of which Trump highlighted.
As Greg Weiner observed in National Affairs, “Expertise — which can become both too confident with itself and too obsessive about its own narrow competencies — is not the same as wisdom or judgment.” Scientists, especially infectious disease scientists, are perhaps the most critical assets during a pandemic. They are also not the only assets, nor are their concerns the only concerns worth considering. Biden thinks he is gaining a leg up on Trump by making this commitment to deference to scientists, but it’s totally imprudent in its expressed narrowness.
On several occasions, Anthony Fauci and other public health officials have said as much, stating that they are not economists and can’t speak to how to respond properly to economic questions as they relate to the virus. This concession is one that Biden would do well to remember if he wins, and future moderators would do well to press him more on his commitment to lockdowns.
