When the avian flu first spread to pockets of Southeast Asia in 2005, President George W. Bush reassured Americans he would be prepared if the viral infection reached the United States.
“I have thought through the scenarios of what an avian flu outbreak could mean,” Bush informed the public at a news conference in the White House Rose Garden that October, noting his recent dive into a book on pandemics.
It was John M. Barry’s “The Great Influenza,” a meticulous account of the Spanish flu, which claimed an estimated 675,000 American lives a century ago. Bush had read a copy while vacationing at his Prairie Chapel Ranch in Texas.
Now, as a new virus wreaks havoc on the United States — leaving hospitals overwhelmed, businesses shuttered and at least 10 million Americans suddenly unemployed in just two weeks — some Trump officials are replicating the former president’s approach. Desperate for insight into how to respond to a staggering death toll and deep recession, the White House machinery is digging through American history for answers, hoping that somewhere in two-and-a-half centuries of war, economic volatility, resilience and patriotism they might find analogs to help rally the nation and protect their boss’s legacy.
Deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger finished a copy of Barry’s sobering narrative himself in early January, when the first cases of Covid-19 spread beyond mainland China.
A senior speechwriter for one Cabinet official read and then re-read Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first inaugural address — a powerful sermon on hope in the midst of the Great Depression, best known for Roosevelt's declaration that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
Even President Donald Trump, who prefers cable news and clipped articles to fine details and history books, appeared to have reviewed casualty statistics prior to briefing reporters this week about the estimated death toll for the novel coronavirus. Trump’s own health experts project the number of Covid-19 fatalities in the U.S. could surge past 100,000 — and even higher if social distancing restrictions on work, school attendance and travel are not strictly followed in certain areas of the U.S.
“Look, we had the Civil War. We lost 600,000 people, right?” Trump said in the White House press briefing room Wednesday. “You know, we lose more here potentially than you lose in world wars as a country, so there’s nothing positive, there’s nothing great about it.”
Despite the time some administration officials have invested in poring over historical reference points, the scale of Covid-19 — which continues to spread like wildfire across the tri-state area and has already surpassed the death toll of 9/11 — is so sudden and astonishing it’s nearly impossible to predict exactly how it will unfold, regardless of what history forebodes.
“The precedents don’t necessarily fit,” said Matthew Costello, a White House Historical Association historian and American University lecturer. “This is something that has moved with such speed, I really can’t think of another historical comparison.”
“When I think about past presidents who have led us into war, most times there were other designs in place or it was provoked,” he added, citing Trump's recent efforts to cast the viral pandemic as “a medical war.”
As Trump joins the ranks of previous wartime leaders, however, the enemy he is fighting is strikingly unfamiliar: a lethal pathogen that forced Americans into battle with minimal preparation and limited visibility into where this war might take them. Hardly anyone envisioned shelter-in-place orders or deserted streets in major cities when the U.S. recorded its first Covid-19 death at the end of February.
At the time, political pundits were still discussing the impact of impeachment on Trump’s reelection chances. The president himself was fresh off a campaign rally in South Carolina, which he arranged much to the chagrin of the 2020 Democrats competing in a primary that was still in full swing. And White House aides were still celebrating the February jobs report – its expectation-shattering numbers convincing them of their own job security for another four years.
“This is a freak crisis that no one saw coming and I can’t pretend to know what it means for this country, now or in the future,” said one Republican close to the White House.
One of the top challenges Trump and his aides face as they look to history for counsel is that waging war against an “invisible enemy” means there is no clear catalyst, as Costello suggested.
Bush announced Operation Enduring Freedom against Taliban forces in Afghanistan only after terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. President Woodrow Wilson waited two years after winning reelection with the slogan “he kept us out of war” to initiate America’s entry into World War I, a decision he made after German forces resumed submarine warfare in the British Isles. Roosevelt declared war against the Great Depression four years after Black Tuesday, while the American economy remained paralyzed and unemployment hovered around 25 percent.
But for Trump, there is no precipitating event — no Civil War, Pearl Harbor, Sept. 11 or Bay of Pigs — that will irreversibly shape his legacy as it relates to the Covid-19 pandemic. He lacks a singular moment he can point to in Rose Garden appearances or campaign ads to rally the public behind this “war.” Instead, he is stuck with wild stock market fluctuations and a rolling death count, all while he gets attacked by his political opponents for a long string of loose comments downplaying the risks of the novel coronavirus in January and February.
White House allies say history — and voters — are likely to judge Trump by his response to this pandemic, including the death toll and economic impact Americans have endured by the time a vaccine is developed.
“We don’t know what Trump’s legacy will be as a result of this. If it does what the 1918 bug did and becomes deadlier and moves out of its death point at age 60-plus, it will be catastrophic for the world,” said conservative radio personality Hugh Hewitt.
“If it goes the way of MERS and SARS and disappears in one season, then his legacy will be the rebound,” Hewitt added.
But for all the uncertainty surrounding Covid-19 — questions about immunity, contagiousness and lethality abound — there is perhaps even more insecurity about the future of the economy once the virus has been contained. Waning confidence in a swift economic rebound — after so many months of assuring the president a strong economy would carry him to reelection — has led Trump’s campaign operation into its own unprecedented crisis.
Trump has lost the opportunity to present himself this fall as a Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan — the two most recent U.S. presidents to win reelection in the midst of an economic boom.
It’s plausible that Trump will find himself in a position closer to what his two most recent predecessors faced: asking voters to trust that he will get the economy on track to a stronger recovery if they give him the chance through a second term. Both Bush and President Barack Obama faced modest economic growth as they campaigned for reelection in 2004 and 2012, with Obama leaning heavily on his auto industry bailout to shore up support in the Rust Belt.
Of course, neither ex-president faced a global pandemic or sudden recession mere months before voters cast their ballots — a reality that has thrown a wrench into most of Trump's campaign strategy.
To confront this situation, one Trump ally said the president and his aides should indeed borrow a lesson from history, and get his administration out of the way as soon as the public health crisis wanes.
“The greatest threat to a recovery is Washington politicians and bureaucrats deciding they like all the power they have gathered in the public health crisis and … that they are smarter than the market and smarter than all the entrepreneurs in America. That could turn a temporary crisis into a decade-long mess,” said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, suggesting a book about the “forgotten” 1920-21 depression should be required reading in Trumpworld.
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