Despite his very obvious personality flaws during the pandemic, it’s not obvious to me that the outcome would have been very different with someone else in charge in 2020. That may be why the "mostly satisfactory" rating makes sense to many.
Despite his very obvious personality flaws during the pandemic, it’s not obvious to me that the outcome would have been very different with someone else in charge in 2020. That may be why the "mostly satisfactory" rating makes sense to many.
"Someone else", ok. I suppose another leader could've dragged their feet, downplayed, and willfully undermined, in their own ways. No one could've handled it perfectly of course. Then imagine someone who simply knew early on to take it seriously and acted accordingly, who had a plan in place, who hit the ground running and didn't undermine efforts to get it under control (but rather boosted them), who rallied industry and public sentiment, who rejected misinformation and image concerns (This doesn't seem crazy to expect, and would've been superior to what we got). Someone with an ability to adapt as we learned about the virus, with a strict focus on the public good, shutting out the noise. Taking the polar opposite tack to pragmatic and responsible competency does more damage, I think, particularly from a leader heavily burdened by myopic image-fretting and publicly touting misinformation. His personality disorder made him a uniquely poor leader for that situation. We can't know to what degree it would've been different, but presumably doing the opposite of everything he did wrong could get a very different outcome.
There were other leaders at that time. This was a global issue. Other than extreme measures that were taken in places like Australia and New Zealand, nothing really worked. Biden did a poor job even though the vaccine was ready when he took office. More people died in 2021 compared to 2020. Other than better leadership vibes and optics, I don't agree with the argument that another President would have achieved significantly better results in 2020.
Biden didn’t help much after the vaccine rollout, declaring it over prematurely. So yeah, someone stronger and more capable than Biden in place when it hit, which would’ve improved eventual vaccine uptake as well, being Trump supporters drove vaccine denial. (To be fair, a Biden admin wouldn’t have gutted the Obama pandemic protocols. Biden even tweeted in October 2019 we weren’t prepared for a global pandemic. Look it up.) Anyone doing the polar opposite of the particular performative foot-dragging and willful undermining Trump engaged in from the get-go, which Josh oddly labels “mostly satisfactory” (unless he strictly means the big policy moves in a vacuum, warp speed and stimulus (?), then okay), an engaged, more impervious to public opinion leader than Biden, certainly. I’m saying there’s a plausible scenario where it could’ve gone far better, pre and post vaccine. I get it’s theoretical Monday morning quarterbacking, but it isn’t out of the realm of possibility we could’ve had more successful proactive leadership.
Despite his very obvious personality flaws during the pandemic, it’s not obvious to me that the outcome would have been very different with someone else in charge in 2020. That may be why the "mostly satisfactory" rating makes sense to many.
"Someone else", ok. I suppose another leader could've dragged their feet, downplayed, and willfully undermined, in their own ways. No one could've handled it perfectly of course. Then imagine someone who simply knew early on to take it seriously and acted accordingly, who had a plan in place, who hit the ground running and didn't undermine efforts to get it under control (but rather boosted them), who rallied industry and public sentiment, who rejected misinformation and image concerns (This doesn't seem crazy to expect, and would've been superior to what we got). Someone with an ability to adapt as we learned about the virus, with a strict focus on the public good, shutting out the noise. Taking the polar opposite tack to pragmatic and responsible competency does more damage, I think, particularly from a leader heavily burdened by myopic image-fretting and publicly touting misinformation. His personality disorder made him a uniquely poor leader for that situation. We can't know to what degree it would've been different, but presumably doing the opposite of everything he did wrong could get a very different outcome.
There were other leaders at that time. This was a global issue. Other than extreme measures that were taken in places like Australia and New Zealand, nothing really worked. Biden did a poor job even though the vaccine was ready when he took office. More people died in 2021 compared to 2020. Other than better leadership vibes and optics, I don't agree with the argument that another President would have achieved significantly better results in 2020.
Biden didn’t help much after the vaccine rollout, declaring it over prematurely. So yeah, someone stronger and more capable than Biden in place when it hit, which would’ve improved eventual vaccine uptake as well, being Trump supporters drove vaccine denial. (To be fair, a Biden admin wouldn’t have gutted the Obama pandemic protocols. Biden even tweeted in October 2019 we weren’t prepared for a global pandemic. Look it up.) Anyone doing the polar opposite of the particular performative foot-dragging and willful undermining Trump engaged in from the get-go, which Josh oddly labels “mostly satisfactory” (unless he strictly means the big policy moves in a vacuum, warp speed and stimulus (?), then okay), an engaged, more impervious to public opinion leader than Biden, certainly. I’m saying there’s a plausible scenario where it could’ve gone far better, pre and post vaccine. I get it’s theoretical Monday morning quarterbacking, but it isn’t out of the realm of possibility we could’ve had more successful proactive leadership.