“LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” President Trump tweeted out on Friday. And “LIBERATE VIRGINIA” and “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!”
LIBERATE MINNESOTA!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 17, 2020
The Republican Party of Virginia is taking this rally cry and running with it. Here’s an email I got today.
The RPV used the president’s words to complain about “the tyrannical rule of incompetent liberal governors.” Within the email, they made fine arguments, pointing out the folly of Gov. Ralph Northam’s rules: “The State prevents you from buying gardening supplies because it’s dangerous, but allows in person lottery ticket sales … The State tells you it’s dangerous to go golf alone, fish alone, or be in a motor boat alone, but the Governor can get his stage make up and hair done for multiple TV appearances a week…”
But the partisan jibes about tyranny aren’t what we need now.
Governors, including my own Republican Gov. Larry Hogan, whose response to the pandemic I generally applaud, ought to tweak their rules. The public ought to push for some loosening and some adaption. This is especially the job of the media, the legislature, local governments, and opposition parties.
But once we cast our responses to these overreaches and these too-blunt rules as another partisan fight, and as a cudgel with which to bash the other party’s officeholders, we make it less likely that we’ll get the smart, well-considered, properly paced loosening that we need.
Shutting down society and the economy almost happened like flipping off a light switch. A couple of states took some steps, and then boom: Tom Hanks got it, an NBA game was canceled, and next thing, every school is closed, every restaurant is shut down, and tens of millions of people lose their jobs.
But restarting things won’t be like flipping the switch back on. The process will, and ought to be, steady and deliberate. Because we will have 50 different states, each taking different steps at different times, they will learn from one another. Some will surely reopen too fast and get a second spike in cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. Others will have more luck with their aggressive actions and end up showing how to return things to normal safely. Eventually, the laggard states will dial back more restrictions.
This effort is unprecedented, and so every governor and mayor is making an educated guess.
Scott Gottlieb, my colleague at AEI and the former head of the Food and Drug Administration, has issued a thoughtful and detailed road map for reopening. He lays out four phases of the fight. We’re currently in Phase I, which is the broad lockdown in order to slow the spread of the disease.
Phase II in Gottlieb’s roadmap is a state-by-state loosening of restrictions and reopening of institutions, with continued physical distancing, protection of vulnerable populations, and improved public hygiene and sanitation. This is appropriate when states or cities “are able to safely diagnose, treat, and isolate COVID-19 cases and their contacts,” as Gottlieb’s road map puts it.
Georgia Gov. Matt Kemp says that his state qualifies for Phase II, and so he’s reopening gyms, bowling allies, and other businesses, while also requiring spacing and sanitation.
Kemp may or may not be moving too quickly into Phase II. What he’s not doing, though, is declaring his state “LIBERATED” or trying to score partisan points. He’s trying to work his way back to normalcy, as circumstances allow.
Here in Phase I for most of the country, I think some states already ought to loosen some rules. For instance, outside of really bad hot spots, states should allow perfectly safe activities whether or not they are deemed “essential.”
Some states probably need to tighten some rules. The point is this is a very delicate, gradual process. We need to value freedom, mental health, and community ties more, yes. But we can do that best by making the case against specific rules, pointing out why they impose greater costs than the benefits they bring about.
What we don’t need is the sort of partisan sloganeering Trump was issuing last week.
