[BostonCard]

Well, based on their respective perfomences:

At the next Italian election, I will certainly not vote for the M5S or the PD (the Italian governing coalition)
At the next German election, I will not vote for Angela Merkel's CSU party
At the next Spanish election, I will not vote for Pedro Sanchez' PSOE party
At the next UK election, I will not vote for Boris Johnson's Torries

Unfortunately, not being a citizen of those countries, I will not have an opportunity to hold them to account for their missteps.  The one leader who I will have an opportunity to hold to account is Donald Trump.

There is no doubt that facing a global pandemic is a much harder task as a leader than, say, jawboning Canada and Mexico into updating their trade agreement with the US or getting a corporate tax cut passed through a congress controlled by your own party (two pick two things that the President accomplished).  Maybe 90% of leaders would or are failing at that task.  Unfortunately, we only get to evaluate our leaders based on the job they do against the challenges they face; we don't get to see the alternative universe where we have a different President in office.  We don't get to find out if Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio or John Kasich or one of the dozen other Republican candidates running for office would have done better under the circumstances.  All we know is that facing the biggest and most important challenge of his Presidency, the response by this administration was, well, you know my opinion of it.

Now, maybe you believe that under the difficult circumstances presented that this administration did as well as it could have and was more proactive, responsive, and effective than any other leader would have been.  Since there is no way to prove the alternative scenario, it is not an invalid point of view.   I think it betrays the tyranny of low expectations in leadership, but it is not a disprovable hypothesis.  But I would at least like to see the affirmative case for what the administration has done well.  And from my point of view, I am largely left with, "well he instituted a travel ban at the end of January", and at least as far as I can see, not much else.  What am I missing?  What part of the response has been executed well so far?  Because otherwise the defense of the President looks a lot like excuse making (China is a vile regime and lied [duh], lots of other countries had bad responses, previous presidents have also underinvested in pandemic preparedness, etc.) Do you honestly think there is nothing else the administration could have done differently that might have put us in a better position now?

BC

[BostonCard]

Well, based on their respective perfomences:

At the next Italian election, I will certainly not vote for the M5S or the PD (the Italian governing coalition)
At the next German election, I will not vote for Angela Merkel's CSU party
At the next Spanish election, I will not vote for Pedro Sanchez' PSOE party
At the next UK election, I will not vote for Boris Johnson's Torries

Unfortunately, not being a citizen of those countries, I will not have an opportunity to hold them to account for their missteps.  The one leader who I will have an opportunity to hold to account is Donald Trump.

There is no doubt that facing a global pandemic is a much harder task as a leader than, say, jawboning Canada and Mexico into updating their trade agreement with the US or getting a corporate tax cut passed through a congress controlled by your own party (two pick two things that the President accomplished).  Maybe 90% of leaders would or are failing at that task.  Unfortunately, we only get to evaluate our leaders based on the job they do against the challenges they face; we don't get to see the alternative universe where we have a different President in office.  We don't get to find out if Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio or John Kasich or one of the dozen other Republican candidates running for office would have done better under the circumstances.  All we know is that facing the biggest and most important challenge of his Presidency, the response by this administration was, well, you know my opinion of it.

Now, maybe you believe that under the difficult circumstances presented that this administration did as well as it could have and was more proactive, responsive, and effective than any other leader would have been.  Since there is no way to prove the alternative scenario, it is not an invalid point of view.   I think it betrays the tyranny of low expectations in leadership, but it is not a disprovable hypothesis.  But I would at least like to see the affirmative case for what the administration has done well.  And from my point of view, I am largely left with, "well he instituted a travel ban at the end of January", and at least as far as I can see, not much else.  What am I missing?  What part of the response has been executed well so far?  Because otherwise the defense of the President looks a lot like excuse making (China is a vile regime and lied [duh], lots of other countries had bad responses, previous presidents have also underinvested in pandemic preparedness, etc.) Do you honestly think there is nothing else the administration could have done differently that might have put us in a better position now?

BC