Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news media and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
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Paul Krugman: Starve the Beast, Feed the Depression
Anti-government ideology is crippling pandemic policy.
So Donald Trump’s name will, in a break with all previous practice, appear on the checks that will slightly mitigate the Donald Trump depression caused by the Donald Trump pandemic. Hey, we’re supposed to put his name on everything, right?
The operative word, however, is “slightly.” Those $1,200 checks, it turns out, are only a small fraction of the rescue package Congress passed a few weeks ago. And the CARES Act, in turn, fell far short of meeting the nation’s needs.
Given the scale of the economic carnage — 22 million jobs lost in four weeks — we need another huge relief program, both to limit financial hardship and to avoid economic damage that will persist even when the pandemic fades.
But we may not get the program we need, because anti-government ideologues, who briefly got quiet as the magnitude of the Covid-19 shock became apparent, are back to their usual tricks.
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Eugene Robinson: Trump refuses to lead a country in crisis
For three years, we were lucky. We made it through most of President Trump’s term in office without facing a crisis that required great presidential leadership. Now, our luck has run out, and we are on our own.
It is difficult to overstate the scope of the challenge that covid-19 presents to the nation and the world — or the tragic inadequacy of Trump and his administration. Sometimes, an underestimated president improbably rises to meet the moment: Think of Harry S. Truman rebuilding a free and peaceful Europe after World War II, or George W. Bush rallying the nation with his bullhorn in the ruins of the World Trade Center. But Trump has become smaller, pettier, more self-absorbed. He failed.
There is much that the nation desperately needs right now: more financial help for the tens of millions of newly unemployed; more support for small businesses on the brink of failure; more consistent guidance on surviving the crisis day-to-day. But there is one need that surpasses all the rest, because meeting it could change everything and put us on the path to recovery: quick, reliable, universal testing that can tell us who has been infected with the novel coronavirus and who has not.
Trump could make that happen. Bizarrely, and tragically, he refuses to act.
Jamelle Bouie: Trump and His Allies Are Worried About More Than November
The temporary imposition of popular relief programs in response to the coronavirus makes Republicans nervous.
In the face of mass unemployment and a rapidly contracting economy, President Trump is desperate to end the pandemic lockdown and bring the country back on line. That’s why he spent the past week asserting his “total” authority to reopen the economy (“The president of the United States calls the shots”) and promising a rapid return to normal: “Our country has to get open, and it will get open, and it’ll get open safely and hopefully quickly — some areas quicker than others,” he said on Tuesday.
Republicans in Congress, likewise, are urging an end to the freeze. “It should have happened yesterday,” Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona, chairman of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus, told Politico. Representative Trey Hollingsworth of Indiana acknowledged the chance of “loss of life” from an early end to social distancing but asserted, nonetheless, that it was better than the alternative. “It is policymakers’ decision to put on our big boy and big girl pants and say it is the lesser of these two evils,” he said to a local radio station. Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana was even more blunt during an interview on Fox News on Wednesday. “We gotta reopen, and when we do, the coronavirus is going to spread faster, and we got to be ready for it.”
No doubt there is real concern for the economic and health consequences of an extended shutdown. But Republicans, and Trump in particular, are also thinking about November. If the president knows anything, it’s that his fate rises and falls with the state of the economy. And if he loses his campaign for re-election, then in this polarized environment of nationalized politics, he’s likely to take congressional Republicans down with him.
Catherine Rampell: This ‘dreamer’ is saving lives during this pandemic. She wants a chance at normal life.
Dr. P. has to be reminded to take breaks during her 12-hour emergency-room shifts — to drink water so she doesn’t get dehydrated; to go to the bathroom; even just to breathe for a few minutes alone, unencumbered by layers of sweaty, suffocating personal protective equipment.
It can be hard to remember to pause because there’s too much to do. Too many patients, everywhere, wheezing and gasping for air. Even before the ER was overwhelmed, she had been reluctant to step away. In mid-March, as patients were surging into emergency departments, she requested to cancel some scheduled time off.
“I asked to keep working, rather than just sit at home and do nothing,” she said. “It’s a helpless feeling sitting at home, knowing that things are getting worse at the hospital.”
But if the Supreme Court lets the Trump administration have its way, she might have to stop her lifesaving work, permanently.
Paul WAldman: Trump’s retreat from responsibility will fail
Everyone knows about President Trump’s bombast, his relentless self-promotion and his absurd hyperbole. He can’t eat a piece of cake without telling you it was the “most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you’ve ever seen.”
But along with his thirst for affirmation is a need, just as powerful, to escape responsibility when things go wrong.
It’s something he’s very experienced at. You have a big, splashy event in front of the cameras announcing that you’ve built the most luxurious hotel or golf course or casino the world has ever seen, and then if it goes bankrupt, you skedaddle out of town, leaving other people holding the bag. So now Trump is preparing to put that experience to work with the coronavirus pandemic and the economic crash it created.
Though nothing with Trump is ever permanent, he seems to be in the midst of a transition, from claiming credit he doesn’t deserve to evading the blame that he does. [..]
It’s often said that presidents get more credit than they deserve when things go right and more blame than they deserve when things go wrong. Trump desperately wants the former without the latter. But with things going so terribly wrong and his own performance so obviously lacking, his old strategies aren’t going to work.
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