As a responsible citizen in a ‘high risk’ category because of my age and medical condition, I have faithfully been listening to the President’s Coronavirus Task Force briefings each morning. On Monday, there was hope that the coin finally had dropped and the President finally understood the seriousness of this monumental crisis moment in our history. He was surprisingly focused, on message, deferred to the medical experts and to the extent that he is capable, tried to instill confidence in the Federal government’s response to this pandemic crisis.
Unfortunately, it was downhill from there. The remainder of the week witnessed the same arrogant behavior with misguided and reckless comments that could not help but exacerbate the growing anxiety and panic that is understandably sweeping the country.
This is not the time to once again extoll one’s brilliance, not the time to falsely claim one’s prescience in knowing that ‘it was always a pandemic,’ not the time to once again pick fights with the media and insult reporters who are attempting to ask the hard questions for the American public, and certainly not the time to pick a fight with Dr. Anthony Fauci in setting false hope before the American people who are grasping for anything, by extolling the potential ‘game changer’ of a medication used for malaria in its limited ‘anecdotal’ benefit for folks suffering with covid-19. I was aghast when Trump said that he just had a ‘good feeling’ about this!
Now is not the time for pedaling false hope. However, it is the time for consistency in telling the inconvenient truths that this moment has tragically occasioned. It is the time for courageous and disciplined leadership, like that of Governor Andrew Cuomo and Governor Newsom.
This pandemic is going to require what China did by force and what a growing number of States and communities are being asked to do out of their fundamental care, respect and love for their fellow citizens – stay at home, shelter in place, assiduously follow CDC guidelines to limit the spread of this highly contagious virus.
A number of you, I’m sure, heard the comments of youth frolicking on the beaches in Florida on spring break. One after another expressed the foolish invulnerability that sadly can be part of the insouciance of youth. The tragedy of such misguided hubris is that, in this instance, it can kill. It’s as simple as that.
True leadership shines in times of crisis – we need only think of Churchill, Roosevelt, General Eisenhauer on D Day, Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis, George W. Bush on 9/11. In these and countless leaders who have faced crisis moments, the word ‘I’ is rarely used, one coaches the best in others, one exercises pristine and steely calm in the midst of the storm, one humbly defers to the expertise of others, one speaks to build bridges and a sense of solidarity in the face of a common enemy.
As we face a transition in leadership in November, I pray that such a leader will emerge!