Donald Trump Isn’t Helping Himself

At the rate the unpredictable American president is blundering over the coronavirus, Joe Biden’s best strategy might be to just stay quiet in his basement.

Life has its share of ironies. For Donald Trump, perhaps the greatest is that, as was already noted in early March, the crisis that threatens his presidency the most is one of the few for which he is not to blame.

Hence, after Ukraine and Russia, after the Robert Mueller investigation and the impeachment trial, after the sexual scandals over Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, and after countless tweets, a mere virus has for two months tormented Trump’s presidency without letup.

A virus, we must remember, that comes from the country with which the president initiated a major trade war, and with which he was apparently about to sign a historic agreement before the virus broke out. Again, the irony is hard to miss.

I wrote two months ago that Trump’s two greatest political risks stemming from the coronavirus were that he could be accused of minimizing the danger, and that the crisis would sink his main claim for deserving reelection: the strength of the American economy.

Now, these two issues are even more valid. The Democrats are already sending out extremely perceptive ads highlighting Trump’s outbursts on the virus during the winter, especially his declaration that it would disappear “like a miracle.” They also announce that if the U.S. economy continues on its present path, it’s headed straight for a depression.

Should we then say that the game is up for Trump no matter what he does? No! For along with the nightmarish complications this problem has created for policy makers, starting with the president, there may also be opportunities. The most obvious one, particularly for a sitting president, is to deliver a message that no opposing candidate can hope to equal.

Obama in 2012, Cuomo in 2020

By way of example, the last president to have won reelection, Barack Obama, fell behind his Republican adversary Mitt Romney two weeks before the voting in the 2012 race. Then Hurricane Sandy battered America’s east coast. For several days, the spotlight was on Obama, who showed himself in control of the situation, and the powerless Romney was relegated to the shadows long enough for his lead to fade away. He conceded defeat the day of the election. According to exit polls, almost two-thirds of voters indicated that Obama’s response to the hurricane affected their decision, and more than 60% of these voters went for him.

Eight years on, we can observe several elected officials who have amassed great political capital out of the coronavirus, and among them New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is the major example − yet another hard-to-miss irony considering that his state is the worst hit by the crisis.

Trump in a World of His Own

This is not the case with Trump. To the contrary, after having briefly seen his approval ratings rise with a majority of Americans who approve of how he has handled the pandemic, the president is now losing altitude.

More disturbing for his team is that he is definitely falling behind Biden not only at the national level, but also in several key states that he needs in order to win a second term, including Arizona, Florida and Wisconsin.

It is truly difficult not to connect Trump’s political problems with his personal conduct; for example, his suggestion in front of the press that injecting disinfectant might cure the coronavirus that quickly went viral.

Trump’s press conferences, moreover, are becoming increasingly troublesome for him, given his use of them to pontificate, attack other elected officials and then proceed with daily briefings on the coronavirus in front of the most hostile reporters.

The cacophony and inconsistencies that characterized Trump’s first years in office have become worse in the COVID-19 era. Thus, after announcing that he would leave the handling of reopening up to state governors, a decision for which they were grateful, he launched a series of tweets in which he appeared to call for a popular uprising against governors who were not perceived to be reopening quickly enough. After that, he publicly condemned the reopening declared by the governor of Georgia, one of his major supporters, because he thought he was going too far. All this happened in less than a week.

Although the public longs for an image of stability in times of crisis, the president displays everything but that. Even more remarkable is that his vice president, whom he put in charge of the fight against the coronavirus in the White House, has shown himself to be steady under extremely difficult circumstances.

When Mike Pence speaks in his affected tone, he relieves the tension a bit, and when other White House experts speak, starting with White House coronavirus task force members Drs. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx, they usually have the same effect. Trump would do himself some good by allowing them more latitude, if only he could handle not constantly being the center of attention.

This has broader implications for the 2020 presidential campaign. It was often said in 2016 that, given the huge unpopularity of both Trump and Hillary Clinton, the candidate who cut the best figure in the race would be the one the media ignored most. In carrying on as usual, Trump will certainly remain the center of attention. And if he doesn’t stop his behavior, he might give Biden hope of beating him by staying in his basement right up to Nov. 3.