Politico reports:

Welcome to politics’ darkest hour.

If the coronavirus outbreak has taught us anything beyond the necessity of careful hygiene, it’s that the first victim of a pandemic is leadership.

At no time in the past 75 years has the world been in more need of a “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” moment; and at no time have global leaders so utterly failed to deliver.

From Beijing to Brussels, from Rome to Washington, London and beyond, politicians haven’t just failed to rise to the occasion, they’ve engaged in a dangerous game of parsing, obfuscation and reality-denial that has cost lives and delayed a resolute response.

Even though virologists have been warning for weeks that the outbreak could explode, political leaders, particularly in the West, did little to halt its advance.

Like the virus itself, which scientists have traced to the Chinese city of Wuhan (and leaders there denied and downplayed for weeks), the prevailing political strategy for confronting the crisis was Made in China.

Few may have expected inspired leadership from U.S. President Donald Trump, who dismissed the coronavirus as a Democratic “hoax” and just days ago predicted it would disappear “like a miracle.” Even so, his fumbling of a national address on the emergency, followed by his trademark blame-shifting for his government’s lack of preparedness (“I don’t take responsibility at all”), will be remembered as a low point in American political leadership.

Solidarity with allies? Think again. Trump followed up his ban on Europeans traveling to the U.S. (a decision he announced without even making a courtesy phone call to EU leaders beforehand) with an attempt to reportedly buy a vaccine-maker out from under the Germans’ noses, aiming to guarantee Americans are first in line for the corona shot the firm is developing.

The irony is that the Trump administration previously opted not to use the German-developed coronavirus test endorsed by the World Health Organization, choosing instead to develop its own version, which has proved unreliable. The decision has created massive delays in testing in the U.S., allowing the “foreign virus,” as Trump calls it, to spread unabated. South Korea tests more people per day than the U.S. has in total in the weeks since the outbreak began. The fiasco didn’t stop Trump from falsely claiming last week that “testing has been going very smooth.” [Continue reading…]