American Politics Discussion Thread

[Bobchillingworth]

You are either deliberately misinterpreting me or otherwise completely missing my point, which is that direction in the federal government comes from the top down. The president, vice president, cabinet secretaries, and the president's various other appointees aren't just a cast of colorful showmen who impress the public with razzle-dazzle while the career people quietly chart the course of the nation.


Don't misunderstand- the president does not micromanage the United States like an empire in Civilization, nor does any president know the roles and responsibilities of any given job role, or the org charts for every agency, or any other similarly absurd scenario. What the president does is provide guidance, which is refined through a chain of political appointees at the tops of every agency down to the civil servants charged with implementing it. Direction does not flow uphill.


Take the example of the Muslim travel ban Trump sought initiate immediately upon taking office. Career employees were charged with turning his ill-conceived and blatantly illegal directive and turning it into workable policy, which ground level staff at the TSA, etc. then had to carry out. The result was chaos at airports across the country and damage to our foreign relations. The negative repercussions were not because some deep state deliberately sabotaged the president and/or misled him into signing off on a tragically flawed plan, but because the president is incompetent, and his terrible and malign intent has repercussions when implemented in the real world. In the case of the current crisis, the president saw no value in investing in pandemic preparedness, and directed resources be diverted elsewhere or eliminated altogether. The president is not a figurehead. His decisions have consequences.


In your imagining, the president is not held accountable for the consequences of his actions, while the blame falls entirely on those burdened with carrying out his grotesque and ill-conceived schemes. This is entirely backwards.

[Mr. Cairo]

I’ve been waiting for a politician to say “enough is enough, the treatment is worse than the disease.”   Showing you were tough on crime^H^H^H^Horonavirus after what happened in the UK seemed to be the safe a.k.a. wimpy path.  I didn’t vote for him and could never have imagined a scenario where I would in 2020, but if Trump is going to actually be the only non-hysterical one in the room, this could be my first single issue election.

Darrell

Well, america has had a long tradition of letting poor people die from lack of medical care, why should this pandemic be any better?

It's also sad that Trump only appeared to come round to this idea (treatment is worse than disease) after hearing a guy say it on Fox.


As for his actual actions during this crisis, I don't really care, the US health care "system" is simply not designed to provide the sort of mass, universal care required to protect the entire population from a pandemic. A better president might have been able to react better, and work with the governors better, and communicate to the public better, but it would still end up being really bad.

That being said, "I don't take responsibility" is possibly the most pathetic, cowardly thing a president could ever say. He's the president, and the buck stops there. He seems pathologically incapable of accepting any real responsibility, unless it happens to make him look good. And that alone should make him unfit to be president

[Gustaran]

- The latest thing I read is that Trump tells people about his "feelings" about what drugs to use to combat Coronavirus

Idiocy - if true.  He could be simply imprecise and be summarizing a report someone made to him, no idea whether he's literally reporting his feelings or whether he's using the idiom to mean 'the current semi-supported hypothesis of the medical community'.  I don't trust the media to ever put a Trump quote in context.

You can watch part of his original statement about Chloroquine right here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GuNbGC2D_8


If it wasn't so serious it would be comical: Trump says about Chloroquine "It's not gonna kill anybody".

Lo and behold :

"Woman whose husband died after ingesting chloroquine warns the public not to 'believe anything that the president says"
https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavi...?r=DE&IR=T

"Nigeria records chloroquine poisoning after Trump endorses it for coronavirus treatment"
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/23/afric...index.html

I’ve been waiting for a politician to say “enough is enough, the treatment is worse than the disease.” 

But the alternative is to have the health care system overrun. The question is: How many deaths are you willing to accept to let the economy run normally again?

The current estimate of total infections in a population until spread stops is around 60%. Death rate is very hard to calculate at the moment, especially since it differs massively based on the capabilities of the health system and there are a lot of asymptomatic and untested cases. Most estimates range between 0.5 % and 4%, so let's just assume 2% of infected die, if hospitals are overrun and the health care system collapses.

So 60% of US population is around 196 million, 2% of those means a little less than 4 million people would die in the US. Are you willing to accept that to prevent massive economic damage? Do you think people will accept it, if you have videos of elderly people slowly suffocating, because there are no ventilators available?

Just to give you an idea what it looks like with lockdowns in place:

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-t...l-11960597

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0KC7HKpNZw


There is an analysis on CNN that talks about this today. I don't think there is an easy answer, though.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/23/polit...index.html

[The Black Sword]

I don't expect too much from politicians in this situation, nobody is elected for their epidemiology knowledge. The main thing I expect them to do is to communicate clearly to the public, to make them understand the severity of the situation, that their personal hygiene standards can have a huge impact, and at the same time to keep them calm and try bring them together. Other than that, all they can really do is whatever their experts can tell them.

That's the key task I expect from a leader but it seems to me that Trump has done the exact opposite of that. I'd be pretty confident that it resulted in multiple early spreads of the virus, that didn't need to happen in an alternate reality, and that will snowball into many more down the line.

[mackoti]

I don't expect too much from politicians in this situation, nobody is elected for their epidemiology knowledge. The main thing I expect them to do is to communicate clearly to the public, to make them understand the severity of the situation, that their personal hygiene standards can have a huge impact, and at the same time to keep them calm and try bring them together. Other than that, all they can really do is whatever their experts can tell them.

That's the key task I expect from a leader but it seems to me that Trump has done the exact opposite of that. I'd be pretty confident that it resulted in multiple early spreads of the virus, that didn't need to happen in an alternate reality, and that will snowball into many more down the line.

Like americans listen to Trump. I read several of theyr forums and the one leaning democrat will do exactly the oposite what trump said, because well Trump is stupid and on the republican part they said no one has the right to tell them what to do(not all of them but many, same for dems).You seen there was declared the lock down and they charched the beach in Florida. In USA the obedience to the power(government) is way diferent that all the countries, this is one of the things i love how americans are, and me working with many in Romania made me to love them as they were realy kind, helpfull , not fast to judge , and they were saying many times you donne a good job, things I never hear in my life before.

[The Black Sword]

I think some proportion of a big population would have listened to him. I think some proportion of the population did listen to him and hence didn't modify their behaviour. Maybe I'm overestimating how many people that is in my mind, but I doubt the number is 0.

[Mardoc]

You are either deliberately misinterpreting me or otherwise completely missing my point, which is that direction in the federal government comes from the top down.

I understand your point.  I just disagree.  I think it's a theory that can almost apply to a small private organization such as a startup company, where the CEO has complete hiring/firing/compensation authority and the organization is small and focused enough for her to understand.  I think as soon as you remove the ability for the 'leader' to both know what's going on and provide meaningful incentives to everyone, this starts to fade.

I think the US government has been tuned to be basically opposite to those conditions.  First, the scope is unreasonable - it's unlikely for a president to be able to understand more than a couple of these agencies well enough to provide useful input. We've also drastically cut the President's authority for hiring/firing/compensation on the not-unreasonable premise that politicians often have goals we don't want, such as providing sinecures to political supporters.  And, on top, many of the checks and balances matter here too - the president can't just fire, he has to do so in a way that the courts consider valid.

The president still has some influence, I grant, but not nearly as much as you're positing.  This isn't a new problem, either.

When contemplating General Eisenhower winning the Presidential election, Truman said, “He’ll sit here, and he’ll say, ‘Do this! Do that!’ And nothing will happen. Poor Ike—it won’t be a bit like the Army. He’ll find it very frustrating.”

https://www.bartleby.com/73/1514.html

So ultimately, I think we're in rough agreement on the actions Trump has taken, but our disagreement is in our beliefs around what is possible.  I feel that you're holding a human officeholder to a superhuman requirement...and you don't.

I think some proportion of a big population would have listened to him. I think some proportion of the population did listen to him and hence didn't modify their behaviour. Maybe I'm overestimating how many people that is in my mind, but I doubt the number is 0.

I agree with you here.  Both that he hasn't been convincing, and that convincing people is in his job description.  I think the fundamental problem is that he wasn't personally convinced until recently.  It's messed up that so many facts have become partisan, but it has the consequence that it's hard to tell what's true or not true about anything that has political implications.

I think I would hold him to a higher standard here if I saw someone else doing better on this front.  But my perception is that a month ago, there were two sides: Trump didn't think this was a big deal, but it provided a handy stick to ban Chinese travel, and the Democrats didn't think this was a big deal and they figured he was only pushing it because he already didn't like the Chinese.  No one big saw this coming.  Hence, C - neither substantially better nor worse than the rest of the class.  The travel ban was a good idea but probably enacted for the wrong reason, which is why it wasn't part of a coherent strategy or message.

[Cornflakes]

Lo and behold :

"Woman whose husband died after ingesting chloroquine warns the public not to 'believe anything that the president says"
https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavi...?r=DE&IR=T

3rd paragraph of the linked article:

It's not clear how much chloroquine the man ingested, and Banner Health said he and his wife ingested a version of the chemical that's used to clean aquariums.

Better headline: "Woman's husband dies, warns to consult doctor before ingesting cleaning product"

Better article about this incident: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/20...ing-death/

But the poisoned Arizona couple was not duped by disinformation online. Instead, they sought an at-home version of a real anti-viral drug that some early reports suggest might help fight coronavirus. Their mistake was deadly.

“There is no specific medicine recommended to prevent or treat the new coronavirus,” according to WHO. “Some specific treatments are under investigation, and will be tested through clinical trials."

The couple’s confusion over chloroquine highlights why the best thing to do if you think you might be infected or exposed to coronavirus is call your doctor, rather than seeking treatment at home.

[darrelljs]

the US health care "system" is simply not designed to provide the sort of mass, universal care required to protest the entire population from a pandemic.

Who does?

Darrell

[darrelljs]

I’ve been waiting for a politician to say “enough is enough, the treatment is worse than the disease.” 

But the alternative is to have the health care system overrun. The question is: How many deaths are you willing to accept to let the economy run normally again?

That is almost the right question, and the answer is "I don't know". I would posit the right question is "which path leads to less human misery/better social well being?". It's not just death that sucks. One model of an 18 month shutdown leads to 10 years of 20%+ unemployment. If you can believe the Russians, 7 million Americans died as a result of the Great Depression.

I don't think the data is there yet to know, and prudence says we lock things up in the short term until we do.

Darrell