3/14/20
A global pandemic is a mandatory exam in national competence. It is a test for individuals, who have to change their life and withdraw from public events to slow the spread of a disease through crowds and social networks. It is a test for companies, which must change their protocols to protect their employees, sometimes by banishing them from the office. It is a test for institutions, which must decide whether to uphold traditions and festivals for the sake of public morale, or to cancel events, tournaments, conferences, and concerts. And it is, above all, a test for the state. Only the national government can oversee the response to a national outbreak by coordinating research on the nature of the disease. Only the state can ensure the national regulation and accuracy of testing, and use its fiscal and monetary might to stimulate the economy if the pandemic threatens people’s income and employment. Throughout the world, the most effective responses to the historic threat of the coronavirus have come from state governments. South Korea opened a number of drive-through centers to accelerate diagnostic testing. But in the United States, the pandemic has devolved into a kind of grotesque caricature of American federalism. The private sector has taken on quasi-state functions at a time when the executive branch of government—drained of scientific expertise, starved of moral vision—has taken on the qualities of a failed state. The most important actor of them all—the Trump administration—has been a shambolic bonanza of incompetence.
It might seem hyperbolic to compare the U.S. government to a failed state that cannot project its authority or adequately ensure the safety of its population. But for much of the past month, the White House has shown an inability to do either. The Trump administration has failed to perform the most basic function of a state during a pandemic—which is to accurately assess the threat. While South Korea is reportedly conducting 10,000 tests a day, lawmakers learned on Thursday that the U.S. has conducted only 11,000 coronavirus tests in total. The White House has also failed in its basic role to protect the public by communicating accurate and useful information about public health and hygiene. On February 24, Donald Trump tweeted that “the Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA,” even as cases were growing exponentially. This week, in the president’s only Oval Office remarks since the pandemic struck, Trump made so many mistakes that at least three separate policy announcements had to be corrected. America has not yet failed, but its government has—and, along with it, a certain vision of conservative governance. For decades, the Republican Party has committed itself to destroying state capacity, disparaging science, punishing expertise, and masquerading as populist while enriching narrow interests.