In a time of a looming crisis an effective leader (president), calls in his department heads (cabinet members), and asks them all for a best case/worst case scenario as it pertains to their departments’ area and the potential threat or risk.
A normal request would be something like, ‘Please be ready with a quick 35,000-foot assessment of the threat and/or risk within 72 hours. Please include suggested actions.”
He would then take their advice on what steps should be taken to mitigate the threat and most effectively deal with the crisis. This is risk and crisis management 101. And it should have occurred in January 2020.
What we got in January was a president who denied any problem, lacked total leadership ability and assured the American people that “they” had it under control.
Most assuredly, they did not. In addition, at this point, instead of again taking the lead on this crisis, he pushed the onus down to the state level. News flash, this pandemic is not a state-level issue. It thoroughly involves the whole country and is a federal issue. So the window to react and reduce the impact of the crisis started to narrow and close.
Effective today, the United States is on its way to well over 100,000 dead citizens. This number will swell substantially before we get a handle on the pandemic. And what exactly is the president's, GOP's and right wing's response to this?
“Well, they are mostly old people and would have died anyway!”
Really! In all my nearly 70 years, I have never heard anything so callous, so shallow and so morally corrupt than this response. Every American needs to seriously ask themselves if this is the type of leadership and thought process we wish were running our country. I, for one, say it is not.
Kent C. Overly, Draper
