Rick Perry picked a bad week to burnish his foreign policy credentials. The Texas governor and 2016 Republican presidential hopeful left on a long-scheduled trip to Europe on Sunday, which turned out to be just the moment the Ebola crisis was intensifying at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas.
Perry flew to England on the day nurse Nina Pham was diagnosed with Ebola, which she contracted while caring for the dying Liberian patient Thomas Duncan at Presbyterian.
On Monday, as Perry met with business leaders at an “Invest in Texas UK” event in London, a second nurse from Presbyterian, Amber Vinson, boarded a commercial airliner from Cleveland to Dallas with a low-grade fever that would later be confirmed as Ebola.
On Tuesday, as Vinson was hospitalized in isolation, Perry met with British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne and gave a speech at the Royal United Services Institute. Perry’s address focused on the campaign against ISIS and the larger fight against radical Islam.
On Wednesday, as the nation learned about Vinson’s potentially dangerous flight to Dallas, Perry traveled to Poland, where he visited Auschwitz and spent the night in Warsaw.
On Thursday, with polls showing widespread public concern about Ebola and growing anger at official inaction, Perry cut short his schedule, skipping planned visits to Germany and Ukraine and heading back to Texas.
As Perry traveled, Americans saw with increasing clarity that no one is in charge when it comes to the Ebola crisis. Not President Obama. Not the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Not the Department of Health and Human Services. Not Congress. Not anybody.
The normally unflappable White House spokesman Josh Earnest grew testy Wednesday when asked who is in charge. The White House has rejected calls to appoint an Ebola “czar,” and Earnest explained that Lisa Monaco, the president’s national security adviser, is “responsible for integrating” the government response.
So she’s in charge? reporters asked. No, said Earnest.
OK, then who is? Earnest listed a number of agencies: the Department of Defense, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the CDC, HHS.
“There’s not one person in charge?” asked reporters. An observer might expect Earnest would unequivocally assert that the president is in charge. He didn’t. The White House spokesman was, in effect, declaring an official leadership vacuum.
That’s where Perry might have come in. No, the governor of Texas is not the president. But as governor of the state most affected by Ebola, Perry could have taken the lead in exposing the CDC’s inadequate safety standards, as well as haphazard practices at Presbyterian Hospital, all while pushing hard for a travel ban and other new measures to deal with the crisis.
But Perry was in Europe.
The governor’s office says he has been able to deal with the situation even though he has been out of the country. Perry has received daily updates from Texas officials and on Wednesday talked with White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell.
“Gov. Perry has consistently demonstrated leadership in times of crisis,” said his communications director, Felix Browne. “This is no exception. He swiftly put a world-class task force together to access and provide real-time updates and recommendations. He has remained in close contact with state and federal officials and cut his economic development trip short to return to Texas.”
That’s the kind of thing White House officials said when President Obama went off on fundraising and political trips during various crises. But even Obama — who kept up his travel schedule after the Malaysian airliner was shot down over Ukraine, after the riots in Ferguson, and after the first ISIS beheading of an American — realized that Ebola was a good reason to stay in the office.
For one brief moment, Perry’s trip appeared to accomplish its clear political goal. “If his speech today is any indication, things are looking bright for [Perry’s] presidential resume,” wrote Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin on Tuesday. But then Perry was overwhelmed by events, just like everyone else.
In the end, the Texas governor’s international foray seems decidedly counterproductive. Which would have done more to establish Perry’s presidential leadership credentials — giving a speech in London, or taking charge of a fast-spreading Ebola crisis in Texas?
Americans have become painfully aware that no one is in command in Washington when it comes to this terrifying disease. Rick Perry had a chance to set another standard. But he didn’t.
