Leadership in the Age of Trump

Leadership takes all forms

Leadership skills are not taught but learned through observation and developed through character. We have seen Donald J. Trump at the helm of our country for these past three years. He was elected president of our United States and we expected him to lead the country. In this endeavor, he has failed. No better example of his failed leadership skills could be shown, than in his handling of the recent coronavirus crisis.

"One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency." Arnold Glasow

It is at times such as these that leaders show their true mettle. When experts in the field of pandemics and medicine gave Trump advice that could possibly head off a more serious spread of the virus, provide first responders with the tools necessary to treat the sick, and generally act in a humane manner, he ignored their advice. He started spouting rhetoric that would make him look better and improve his chances in the upcoming election.

COVID-19 Test Kit

At a March 6th press conference, Trump stated that the coronavirus test kits were as “perfect” as his infamous phone call with the Ukrainian president.  I’ll buy some of that since one of the three modules in the kit was a failure and corrected kits were needed.  He went on to say that, he didn’t want the passengers on an infected cruise ship now off the California coast to come ashore because it would hurt his numbers. His quote, “I like the numbers being where they are.  I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship.” This is not a leader worrying about the fate of others in a time of crisis, but a leader more concerned with his reelection.  Think about that attitude for just a moment.  No expression of empathy or sympathy for the crew and passengers stuck aboard a ship full of sick people; he’s worried about his “numbers” and how those numbers might affect him.  That is not a leader.

Cruise ship Princess enters San Francisco Bay

In this most recent crisis, our president should be a leader and a source of trustworthy information. Instead, he promotes outright lies and various falsehoods intended to make him look better. His claim that he would have one million coronavirus test kits available by last Friday (March 6, 2020) was missed by a mere 925,000 kits. He claimed that anyone who wanted to be tested could be tested. We now know that even people who have been exposed and were showing symptoms had been denied testing due to “procedures” and most probably a lack of available test kits. Trump has also claimed, against all the advice of medical professionals, that he will have a vaccine available in weeks or a couple of months at the outside. An optimistic best-case scenario puts the availability of a new vaccine for the coronavirus at least a year away.

This misinformation, spread by our president, follows a very dangerous pattern of deceit involving this potential pandemic.  In 1918, then-president Woodrow Wilson did much the same thing when he launched a dangerous campaign to shore up his support and suppress criticism.  (Sound familiar?)  He established a Committee on Public Information.  Wilson also signed the Sedition Act, criminalizing “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government” or anything else that might impede the war effort.  This stifling of the information under the guise of supporting the war effort ended up allowing the disease to spread from a military camp in Kansas to citizens all across the nation.  A Navy ship carried the virus to Philadelphia, and sailors started dying, but the city’s public health director, a political appointee named Wilmer Krusen, dismissed it as “old-fashioned influenza or grip.” As the toll grew, Krusen assured the public that the city was on track to “nip the epidemic in the bud.”  (Sound familiar?)  This so-called Spanish Flu went on to kill more people than all who died in World War I and World War II, combined.

Woodrow Wilson and Trump have much in common.

Good leadership involves an earned trust.  Great leadership adds to that the ability to lead by example.  Bad leadership is merely obedience demanded with repercussions for non-compliance.  Donald J. Trump falls into the latter category.
We can perhaps overlook Trump’s multiple attempted cutbacks of CDC funding, after all, his attempts failed. We might also overlook the fact that he left positions vacant that were designated to handle pandemics. To quote Monty Python, “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.” 

Spanish Inquisition sketch from Monty Python

We can chalk up his elimination of a position in 2018, on the National Security Council that would have been responsible for coordinating efforts to combat infectious disease to just another in a long string of bad policy decisions. Trump’s closing of the USAID program known as PREDICT that was tasked with the detection and discovery of zoonotic viruses with pandemic potential, like COVID-19, could also be put in the category of whoops-shouldna-done-that.

Joe BTFSPLK of Li'l Abner fame

We can overlook and forgive quite a bit in hindsight. The problem, of course, is that Donald J. Trump seems to be the zoonotic embodiment of Joe Btfsplk of Al Capp’s Li’l Abner comic strip. For those of you not up on your 1970’s cartoons, Joe Btfsplk was a well-meaning jinx who brought disaster to all around him. He walked around with a small bad luck raincloud showering him from up above.  He was a walking disaster.  This character fits Trump with all but the “well-meaning” part of the description.  I was always partial to Daisy Mae myself but, at my age, I have trouble remembering why.  Wait, I’m beginning to remember.

Li'l Abner character Daisy Mae

We know that Trump is aware of the seriousness of the coronavirus; after all, this crisis has recently tanked the stock market and wiped out much of his administration’s major accomplishment.  This virus thing might hinder his chances of getting reelected.  He’s not worried about a bunch of old people dying as long as he isn’t one of them.

The trouble with the future is that it usually arrives before we’re ready for it.  

Arnold Glasow

Trump’s next major move shows he slept through any management classes that dealt with responsible leadership; he put Alex Azar in charge of our nation’s medical needs. Now, don’t get me wrong, delegation is a good thing if you pick the right person with qualifications and give them the authority to get the job done.  But here we find that Mr. Azar’s background in medicine is that he was trained as a lawyer. This is not to diminish his credentials since he was General Counsel to Health and Human Services and was a lobbyist for the pharmaceutical company, Eli Lilly & Co. Given Trump’s slim, almost bare cabinet pickings, Azar was actually a find.  But, then Trump out-Trumped himself with a marginalization of the recently minted Azar as chief of the task force.  He unceremoniously shoved Mr. Azar behind the new coronavirus scapegoat, Mike Pence. Yes, that Mike Pence.

Who's on first?

You see, Mike Pence is a firm believer in science as long as it doesn’t conflict with his interpretation of the Bible, his broken moral compass, or any visions his boss receives from on-high.  In this case, “on-high” is anything from Fox News’ Sean Hannity.  As governor of Indiana in 2015, he rejected a clean needle exchange for drug addicts during the HIV outbreak.  The suffering of the homosexual community was, after all, God’s will.  Pence later “prayed on it,” and eventually lifted the ban. How many people died as a result of this delay is just a matter of conjecture.

Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right thing.   Peter Drucker

Pence also said that “despite the hysteria from the political class and the media, smoking doesn’t kill.” In a strict interpretation of his quote, you might say he is right because it is cancer, heart disease, emphysema, and other related illnesses that actually do the killing. Mike Pence also doesn’t think condoms are effective in preventing STDs. His quote, “truly safe sex is no sex.”  Add to all this his denial of climate change because we (America) have the cleanest air and water in the world (actually, we rank #10), and there you have a fair handle on his scientific credentials. Oh, I almost forgot, he still thinks being gay can be “corrected” with conversion therapy. Will anyone be surprised if he ever comes out of the closet?

If I don't like you, I'll fire you!  If you don't like me, I will fire you!  -- Lou Grant

Well, Trump has his “task force” in place. He now has someone to blame for this mess if it gets out of hand. To Trump, “getting out of hand,” means that a nasty pandemic is getting in the way of his reelection. Any failures here would mean that Pence goes on the well-worn chopping block and Trump picks a new running mate (rumored to be Nikki Haley).  Trump learned from Lou Grant of The Mary Tyler Moore Show who, when asked to what he attributed his managerial success said, “I learned how to delegate blame.”  That’s how I remembered it.  When I looked it up I found that his actual statement was just slightly different...

“If you’ve noticed, I’m one of the few producers without a peptic ulcer. One of the reasons for that is, I’m able to delegate blame.”  

Lou Grant, Season 1, The Mary Tyler Moore Show

Nobody wishes that this new coronavirus gets out of hand. No matter how much you may despise Trump for his other failures; we can all hope this isn’t one of them. We can, however, add his blatant failure of leadership in this crisis right where it belongs.  Trump will own it. Even if it just fades away next month, his lack of leadership in this event shows that he is unfit to lead our country. We can only hope this nation survives his ineptitude long enough to replace him with our usual cadre of well-meaning run-of-the-mill greedy politicians.  As leaders go, I am more interested in the likes of Dwight D. Eisenhower than William Travis.  Travis was a fine patriot, but everyone in his command died at the Alamo.