Precedent doesn’t provide much guidance. There’s a deadly coronavirus threatening to circulate through the population. The resulting government orders and social sanctions for self-distancing and self-isolating behavior is something unprecedented in living memory.
The lack of guiding precedents casts into doubt many long-standing practices and assumptions.
First, as the Hoover Institution’s Michael Auslin writes, “After dealing with the first general great global crisis of the twenty-first century, the world must fundamentally rethink its dependence on China.”
Americans suddenly realize they depend on China for healthcare products from face masks to pharmaceutical medicines, including nearly half our penicillin and nearly all our ibuprofen.
Veteran China-watchers have noticed that China’s economic growth has slowed down, its working-age population is peaking (thanks, one-child policy!), and its legal system and statistics remain unreliable. Now, almost everyone is noticing, in Auslin’s words, “China’s lax public health care, incompetent and intrusive government and generally less developed conditions.”
A turning point for China means a turning point for globalism. For 40 years, American leaders of both parties have assumed that cheap Chinese-produced consumer and manufactured goods are a bargain. COVID-19 strengthens the arguments of Trump Republicans and protectionist Democrats that they actually cost too much.
Global supply chains, once apparently primed to reduce costs forever, now seem to have the potential to increase costs exponentially. Governments and business firms seem likely to conclude that it makes more sense to buy things made closer to home.
Consumers may feel that way too. Destination weddings, requiring multi-thousands to attend, may become sharply less common. Los Angeles suburbanites may skip a father-son ski trip to the Italian Dolomites and just drive four hours-plus to Mammoth instead.
Are we seeing a turning point in public policy as well? Blogger Mickey Kaus notes that President Trump, in his (at last) impressive presentations, called on big business leaders to help lead recovery efforts. For all the rhetorical obeisance to small businesses, this is reminiscent of how big business mobilized the nation during World War II.
That happened because Franklin Roosevelt knew from first-hand experience in World War I that the Wilson administration’s seizure of railroads and shipyards hadn’t worked very well. To maximize production to destroy Hitler, FDR calculated, government needed to enlist the guys who knew how to get things done.
The danger here is crony capitalism, a mostly unavoidable feature of our defense procurement systems ever since. And big business units, coddled by government, aren’t usually good at innovation or efficiency. But we seem to be relying on them more anyhow.
And are we headed for more (any?) bipartisan cooperation on policy? Maybe. Trump’s words admitting his harshness on the press, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s heartfelt praise of the Trump administration’s efforts, Ohio Democratic leaders’ acceptance of Republican Gov. Mike DeWine’s postponement of this week’s primary election — these all point in that direction.
We may also see a turning point in a willingness to ditch, for the moment or permanently, bureaucratic and environmental rules and procedures that delay or impede important actions, such as the January CDC and FDA rulings that effectively blocked coronavirus testing.
COVID-19 has not yet proven to be a turning point in the election process. The one turning point in the presidential race came Feb. 26, when South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn endorsed Joe Biden. The previously lagging Biden clinched the Democratic nomination on Super Tuesday six days later.
Bernie Sanders, vote leader in Iowa, New Hampshire, and California, trudges on but, barring a Biden collapse, to no apparent purpose. Which raises a further question: Is there any reason to hold the two national party conventions at all?
Sure, there’s something to say for historical continuity — Democrats have been meeting every four years since 1832, and Republicans since 1856. Personally, I’d like to stretch my personal record of having attended, in one shape or form, 24 of the 88 national conventions ever held.
But national conventions have long since lost their role as the unique communications medium where politicians could palaver frankly. That communication has filled the air around us, 24/7, for months. Legal requirements could be fulfilled by a virtual convention conducted electronically. We’d avoid exposing 77-year-old and 74-year-old nominees to thousands of potential infectors.
As for a turning point in our stubbornly persistent partisan patterns, I don’t see one yet in the smattering of polls taken this month. Trump still trails Biden, and feelings about the direction of the nation are slightly less downbeat than during most of the Obama years. But still, we’re sailing in uncharted waters.
