Why Can't Trump Handle the Pandemic? Why Can't Pigs Fly?

A question that continues to echo through our politics is "why?" Why has Donald Trump proven so malignantly negligent, ineffectual to the point of impotence, in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic? Any other president in our history would have seized the moment and donned a mantle of national leadership. Virtually any other politician that has gotten anywhere near the White House (picture a President Santorum) would have lead more successfully. Why has Donald Trump refused to confront the realities of the pandemic, even as his stubborn inertia costs tens of thousands of lives?

The most confounding dimension of this dilemma is the political one. Even if Trump did not care about the moral cost of his negligence (which he clearly does not), the electoral price would seem to be ample motivation. As the devastation of the pandemic intensifies and his fortunes sink in the polls, it would seem natural for Trump to pivot. Why doesn't he?

Part of the reason is, of course, that he can't. Trump is not stupid and he is not crazy. But he has always been a low-talent grifter. He does not have the imagination, the discipline, or the energy that would be necessary to re-invent himself. The crisis has provided him with a golden opportunity to explore a new track, but that opportunity is wasted on him. He simply lacks the skills that would be necessary to project empathy, credibility, and sober judgment.

So Trump is stuck with his original brand, and that is racist vitriol. Trumpism is defined by the impulse to hate, it is intrinsically a politics of division. The Covid-19 pandemic, meanwhile, is an object lesson in the fact that we will all sink or swim together. Defeating the pandemic will require mutual trust and cooperation. In the light of mutual trust and cooperation, Trumpism dies. Thus unless Trump can reinvent himself, he must ignore, obfuscate, lie. His only means to deal with the pandemic is to pretend that it is not there.

We are stuck with the worst possible person in the White House at the worst possible moment. Our future rests on two hopes. First, that the electorate will undo this mistake in November. Second, that our system can survive the strain of Trump's negligence until we can acquire new leadership next January.