President Trump’s leadership style is to overpromise on budgets, timelines, and results and then use ambitious goals to drive his administration to deliver, say confidants. Those tactics may work in battling city bureaucracy, as the Trump Organization did to get building permits or to keep unions in line, or in reinforcing and extending border walls, as Trump has done during his presidency. Still, they are not necessarily as useful when fighting an invisible enemy that was unknown to scientists a little more than three months ago.
So when Trump announced he wanted the United States “opened up and just raring to go by Easter,” he faced immediate pushback from public health experts and members of his coronavirus task force, who warned the worst was still to come.
In so doing, he exposed his decision-making process to daylight, revealing different agendas at work and the delicate balance he must strike in protecting the public from COVID-19 and its economic fallout.
“No decisions have been taken” was about as far as administration officials were prepared to comment as the president sounded out White House experts, industry figures, and his informal network of advisers.
A source familiar with task force deliberations said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House Domestic Policy Council Director Joe Grogan both urged the president to ease social distancing measures, which have had a catastrophic effect on the economy.
Their case was bolstered in a conference call on Tuesday (shortly before Trump revealed his Easter target) with Wall Street giants. They included Stephen Schwarzman of Blackstone Group and Jeffrey Sprecher, chairman of the New York Stock Exchange.
Their argument is that global markets need to know there is an end to the crisis if they are to cease their downward plunge.
It cannot come soon enough for small businesses in Georgia’s 10th Congressional District, said Rep. Jody Hice.
“It’s a desperate time, as they have been asked basically to close shop, and the vast majority simply do not have the capital to continue on not working,” he said. “It has become a desperate situation.”
No one is suggesting lifting tight restrictions in areas such as New York City, he said, where the infection curve is still sloping upward. But other parts of the country might be able to get back to work sooner than a one-size-fits-all approach might suggest.
It need not be Easter, but the focus should be on delivering a message of hope.
“You don’t always hit the target, but you have something that you are shooting for, hoping for,” Hice said, adding that the president was right in his analysis.
“We have got to get this economy up and going ASAP,” he said. “As he said, and I agree: We are going to do more harm with the cure than the illness itself if we don’t get the economy up and running.”
Skeptics say the harm could be much more significant if attention is diverted from the primary task of defeating the disease. When asked about the Easter target, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the senior infectious disease specialist on the task force, batted away the question by saying any timetable would have to be flexible.
And even reliable Trump allies fear the worst if the president gets out ahead of the scientific brains on his task force.
Sen. Lindsey Graham used Trump’s wartime metaphor to make the point. It was not unreasonable to want to bring troops home as quickly as possible from Afghanistan, but it was necessary to heed the warnings of generals who said the withdrawal could increase instability, bloodshed, and the risk of terrorism.
“Our goal is to destroy the virus,” he told Fox News. “So any decision to open up the economy based on age or region needs to be scientifically blessed by the experts.
“Any president who turns down sound advice during a war usually regrets it,” he added.
And congressional voices are limited in pushing for the president’s optimistic time frame — at least in public, lest any optimism turn to tragedy.
“Everyone is keen to find out how we can keep business open and minimize the economic hardship,” Graham said, “but at the same time, the priority has to be keeping people safe and well.”
