The Fauci Paradox: Consultation Is Not Leadership
On D-Day in 1944 General Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme commander of Allied forces, sent young Canadians, American and British soldiers to invade France in the full knowledge that he was sending many of them to their deaths. But Eisenhower committed those men in the knowledge that he’d save many, many more people if he made the move.
It was called leadership in those days.
On Monday New York State governor Andrew Cuomo, whose state is the flash point for the Covid-19, announced that his aged mother was “not expendable” in the fight against the vicious virus. Nor were other elderly “expendable” in eradicating the health crisis gripping the world. Cuomo insists policy planning is not a “binary” choice between life and death.
A thought repeated by Democrat frontrunner Joe Biden from somewhere in the swamps of Delaware. “Let me be very clear: No one is expendable. No matter your age, race, gender, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or disability. No life is worth losing to add one more point to the Dow.”
This absolutist stance is hailed as leadership by today’s media.
However warm Cuomo’s humanist stance feels we appear to have now entered into Eisenhower’s realm with the news that U.S. president Donald Trump intends to start lifting isolation orders and re-opening the U.S. economy, currently on life support. In press appearances on Tuesday Trump pointed to Easter weekend (April 9) as an aspirational date for reviving the economy. Resurrection something-something.
Trump echoed Eisenhower as he weighed the deaths that were sure to come from rapidly transitioning back to a functioning economy versus the societal chaos— and death— that would attend keeping the country in lock-down till the summer. Citing statistics on the infection’s spread, Trump is proposing to isolate and protect the vulnerable while gradually liberating low-risk regions and populations to restart the economy.
The contrast reflects the worldview of the two men. Cuomo, the quintessential eastern liberal Democratic figure, believes that, on the authority of scientific analysis, citizens will stay in place until told to re-emerge. The greater good, as Cuomo sees it, will hold them like flies in amber, sacrificing for the policy as long as the Governor deems it.
Trump, the market capitalist, sees it differently, of course. In Trump’s view the public will only wait so long before taking matters into their own hands. Yes, they are willing to sacrifice, but on reaching the point at which they see everything they built collapsing they will leave quarantine and re-start the economy on their own. In short, civil disobedience on a massive scale.
To the Media Party and its adherents cocooned in the Washington political culture, the notion of civil disruption is an impertinence, a defiance to their natural authority. They side with Cuomo and Biden as their hope for normalcy and reinforcement of their dominance.
The president is more sanguine. He knows a mob is milling. So he has decided that analysis of all the expert opinions shall inform his policy. But he, like Ike, will make the final decisions. Consultation is important, but it isn’t leadership.
Naturally, this has brought down the wrath of his many critics. Some accuse him of being a Philistine ignoring the science of his advisers such as prominent virologist Dr. Fauci who, until Jan. 30, was telling Trump that Covid-19 is "a very, very low risk to the United States… It isn't something the American public needs to worry about or be frightened about.”
Others accuse Trump of being a wartime gouger, squeezing out profits for himself and his friends in the dire circumstances. Most call him a huckster, throwing his support behind drug regimes that may offer some relief to sufferers. The peak of Trump Derangement syndrome was the attempt by media— CBC prominent among them— to blame Trump for a couple of Arkansas yahoos poisoning themselves trying to extract chloroquine from aquarium chemicals.
In the end, Trump has chosen Eisenhower’s model of leadership. Taking all the august scientific advice from his panel, he has balanced the fear of losing citizens against the real potential that the civil contract will unwind if people are denied work, pay and access to the society at large.
The outcome of this policy falls entirely on Trump. If it fails he will likely be destroyed this fall in the general election and be castigated by history. If it succeeds he will will be extended the mantle of wartime leader Eisenhower earned, and his critics will be left in the dustbin of history, procrastinators who hesitated when boldness was called for.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the publisher of Not The Public Broadcaster. He’s also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, he is also a best-selling author whose new book Cap In Hand: How Salary Caps Are Killing Pro Sports And Why The Free Market Could Save Them is now available on brucedowbigginbooks.ca.