Letter: Trump and his administration failed to act quickly

Posted 5/7/20

Letters have appeared recently that appear to seek to shield the president from any responsibility for the fact that with just over 4 percent of the Earth’s population, we have about one-third …

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Letter: Trump and his administration failed to act quickly

Posted

Letters have appeared recently that appear to seek to shield the president from any responsibility for the fact that with just over 4 percent of the Earth’s population, we have about one-third of the reported COVID-19 infections and 27 percent of the deaths. It is not the W.H.O. or China or the press or the governors or the citizens who are to blame. It is an administration so focused on the effect the markets might have on Trump’s re-election that it dithered, delayed, obstructed and wasted almost eight critical weeks.

The “China ban” the president is so proud of was so porous that more than 40,000 people came into the country from China AFTER the ban was implemented. Even then, he left the back door from Europe open because the Secretary of the Treasury said the markets would react badly if he closed it. Ask New York how that worked out.

Look, we started this sorry episode with so many advantages: precious time, essentially unlimited money, the finest intelligence capacity on Earth, an incredible health and medical research infrastructure, great universities and technology and pharma companies, and a military with the most sophisticated and powerful logistics ability in the world. It’s shocking therefore to read George Packer, writing in The Atlantic, say, “The United States reacted ... like Pakistan or Belarus – like a country with shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering.” Pretty harsh.

I am a retired Army officer and I am not buying this nonsense that “Obama left the cupboard bare, so don’t blame Trump.” One of the basic principles of the U.S. military is that when you take command of any organization – regardless of size – you own it from that minute. It’s yours to lead; there are no excuses. What your predecessor did or did not do is irrelevant. If you can’t live with that, don’t seek or accept the responsibility of leadership. Simple. And to blame your predecessor for anything after three years is truly craven and would be utterly unthinkable for any U.S. military commander to say. I literally cannot imagine it.

We Americans ‘rally ’round the flag’ during emergencies. This is as it should be. However, we cannot let this worthy instinct blind us to the facts. We cannot let our natural inclination to support the president permit us to let him off the hook when he fails to do the job that we elected him to perform.

Trump and his administration failed to act quickly and effectively, and it’s almost certain thousands of Americans have died unnecessarily. We will all have to live with the consequences of this failure long after he, his third-rate “advisors,” and his enablers are gone.

Dave Burlingame
Bristol

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Jim McGaw

A lifelong Portsmouth resident, Jim graduated from Portsmouth High School in 1982 and earned a journalism degree from the University of Rhode Island in 1986. He's worked two different stints at East Bay Newspapers, for a total of 18 years with the company so far. When not running all over town bringing you the news from Portsmouth, Jim listens to lots and lots and lots of music, watches obscure silent films from the '20s and usually has three books going at once. He also loves to cook crazy New Orleans dishes for his wife of 25 years, Michelle, and their two sons, Jake and Max.