It Would Be Very Different If Our National Leader Wasn't A Serious Head Case

These figures for how many intensive care unit beds and ventilators are short in each stare-- according to reliable COVID-19 projections-- are from yesterday, so they are likely to be worse today. Let's look at each state alphabetically. The states in red have not implemented shelter at home orders. And there is no federal order either. The dates are the projected peak in each state:

• Alabama- 79 bed shortage, 299 ventilator shortage (April 24)
• Alaska- 24 bed shortage, 42 ventilator shortage (April 26)
• Arizona- 300 bed shortage, 436 ventilator shortage (April 19)
• Arkansas- no bed shortage, 177 ventilators needed (April 25)
• California- 299 bed shortage, 1,238 ventilator shortage (April 24)
• Colorado- no bed shortage, 182 ventilator shortage (April 28)
• Connecticut- 422 bed shortage, 281 ventilator shortage (April 10)
• Delaware- 69 bed shortage, 59 ventilator shortage (April 24)
• DC- 21 bed shortage, 33 ventilator shortage (April 24)
• Florida- no bed shortage, 451 ventilator shortage (May 14)
• Georgia- 977 bed shortage, 846 ventilator shortage (April 21)
• Hawaii- 115 bed shortage, 86 ventilator shortage (April 25)
• Idaho- 30 bed shortage, 98 ventilator shortage (April 25)
• Illinois- 204 bed shortage, 721 ventilator shortage (April 16)
• Indiana- 876 bed shortage, 854 ventilator shortage (April 14)
• Iowa- 95 bed shortage, 184 ventilator shortage (April 24)
• Kansas- 32 bed shortage, 167 ventilator shortage (April 24)
• Kentucky- no bed shortage, 95 ventilator shortage (May 5)
• Louisiana- 959 bed shortage, 775 ventilator shortage (April 8)
• Maine- 100 bed shortage, 88 ventilator shortage (April 24)
• Maryland- 71 bed shortage, 182 ventilator shortage (April 19)
• Massachusetts- 1,267 bed shortage, 834 ventilator shortage (April 12)
• Michigan- 2,564 bed shortage, 1,785 ventilator shortage (April 8)
• Minnesota- 247 bed shortage, 325 ventilator shortage (April 24)
• Mississippi- no bed shortage, 176 ventilator shortage (April 23)
• Missouri- 1,046 bed shortage, 866 ventilator shortage (April 20)
• Montana- 35 bed shortage, 65 ventilator shortage (April 25)
• Nebraska- no shortage, 108 ventilator shortage (April 25)
• Nevada- 348 bed shortage, 287 ventilator shortage (April 15)
• New Hampshire- 73 bed shortage, 84 ventilator shortage (April 24)
• New Jersey- 2,243 bed shortage, 1,462 ventilator shortage (April 11)
• New Mexico- 121 bed shortage, 128 ventilator shortage (April 25)
• New York- 6,949 bed shortage, 4,141 ventilator shortage (April 6)
• North Carolina- 606 bed shortage, 633 ventilator shortage (April 22)
• North Dakota- no bed shortage, 41 ventilator shortage (April 25)
• Ohio- 81 bed shortage, 712 ventilator shortage (April 16)
• Oklahoma- no bed shortage, 234 ventilator shortage (April 17)
• Oregon- 9 bed shortage, 118 ventilator shortage (April 24)
• Pennsylvania- 428 bed shortage, 794 ventilator shortage (April 17)
• Rhode Island- 75 bed shortage, 63 ventilator shortage (April 24)
• South Carolina- no bed shortage, 138 ventilator shortage (May 2)
• South Dakota- 17 bed shortage, 49 ventilator shortage (April 26)
• Tennessee- 132 bed shortage, 411 ventilator shortage (April 21)
• Texas- 617 bed shortage, 1,554 ventilator shortage (April 18)
• Utah- 121 bed shortage, 157 ventilator shortage (April 24)
• Vermont- 272 bed shortage, 165 ventilator shortage (April 5)
• Virginia- 183 bed shortage, 276 ventilator shortage (May 2)
• Washington- 96 bed shortage, 236 ventilator shortage (April 19)
• West Virginia- 16 bed shortage, 114 ventilator shortage (April 26)
• Wisconsin- 30 bed shortage, 109 ventilator shortage (May 22)
• Wyoming- 21 bed shortage, 35 ventilator shortage (April 26)

David Corn doesn't want to blame this whole mess on Trump's narcissism-- not when there are so many other personality flaws putting Americans at risk. He acknowledges, of course, that the narcissism is a big problem. After all, that particular pathology-- coupled with obsession about reelection-- "led Trump to downplay the threat and resist widespread testing for weeks... For a narcissist, the most immediate personal need is the most important one. So Trump viewed the burgeoning crisis as a threat to him, not the nation, and he took the steps he usually does in so many circumstances: He denied the threat, claimed he knew better than the experts, and relied on bluster and BS. He did all that instead of adopting early measures that could have slowed the transmission of the virus. But beyond the narcissism, two other fundamental elements of Trump’s character are likely shaping his response: his obsession with revenge and his sense of fatalism. And both are exceedingly dangerous for the American public."

Trump asserts he is a “wartime president.” But an effective commander in chief at war needs to possess certain qualities. He must be able to put national interests ahead of his own. He must unite a nation and transcend political rivalries. He must motivate the citizenry and inspire bravery, resilience, and hope. A narcissist fixated on revenge who holds a dark and apocalyptic view of the future is not the man for the job. Trump does not have the necessary psychological tools for this mission. To the extent this nation survives the coronavirus attack, it will be because governors, mayors, other local officials, and courageous first responders and front-line health care workers beat back the virus and save those American lives they can. Trump cannot be the wartime president Americans require at this horrific moment. He’s not that kind of human being. 

It's no surprise to Peter Wehner-- a conservative Republican who worked for Ronald Reagan and both Bushs-- that Trump is utterly unsuited to deal with this crisis, either intellectually or temperamentally, living as he does in an alternative reality of his own making that is "complete with his own alternate set of facts. He has shown himself to be erratic, impulsive, narcissistic, vindictive, cruel, mendacious, and devoid of empathy. None of that is new. But we’re now entering the most dangerous phase of the Trump presidency. The pain and hardship that the United States is only beginning to experience stem from a crisis that the president is utterly unsuited to deal with, either intellectually or temperamentally. When things were going relatively well, the nation could more easily absorb the costs of Trump’s psychological and moral distortions and disfigurements. But those days are behind us. The coronavirus pandemic has created the conditions that can catalyze a destructive set of responses from an individual with Trump’s characterological defects and disordered personality."

The qualities we most need in a president during this crisis are calmness, wisdom, and reassurance; a command of the facts and the ability to communicate them well; and the capacity to think about the medium and long term while carefully weighing competing options and conflicting needs. We need a leader who can persuade the public to act in ways that are difficult but necessary, who can focus like a laser beam on a problem for a sustained period of time, and who will listen to—and, when necessary, defer to—experts who know far more than he does. We need a president who can draw the nation together rather than drive it apart, who excels at the intricate work of governing, and who works well with elected officials at every level. We need a chief executive whose judgment is not just sound, but exceptional.

There are some 325 million people in America, and it’s hard to think of more than a handful who are more lacking in these qualities than Donald Trump.

But we need to consider something else, which is that the coronavirus pandemic may lead to a rapid and even more worrisome psychological and emotional deterioration in the commander in chief. This is not a certainty, but it’s a possibility we need to be prepared for.

Here’s how this might play out; to some extent, it already has.

Let’s start with what we know. Someone with Trump’s psychological makeup, when faced with facts and events that are unpleasant, that he perceives as a threat to his self-image and public standing, simply denies them. We saw that repeatedly during the early part of the pandemic, when the president was giving false reassurance and spreading false information one day after another.

After a few days in which he was willing to acknowledge the scope and scale of this crisis-- he declared himself a “wartime president”-- he has now regressed to type, once again becoming a fountain of misinformation. At a press conference yesterday, he declared that he “would love to have the country opened up, and just raring to go, by Easter,” which is less than three weeks away, a goal that top epidemiologists and health professionals believe would be catastrophic.

“I think it’s possible. Why not?” he said with a shrug during a town hall hosted by Fox News later in the day. (Why Easter? He explained, “I just thought it was a beautiful time, a beautiful timeline.”) He said this as New York City’s case count is doubling every three days and the U.S. case count is now setting the pace for the world.

As one person who consults with the Trump White House on the coronavirus response put it to me, “He has chosen to imagine the worst is behind us when the worst is clearly ahead of us.”

After listening to the president’s nearly-two-hour briefing on Monday-- in which, among other things, Trump declared, “If it were up to the doctors, they may say … ‘Let’s shut down the entire world.’ … This could create a much bigger problem than the problem that you start off with”—a former White House adviser who has worked on past pandemics told me, “This fool will bring the death of thousands needlessly. We have mobilized as a country to shut things down for a time, despite the difficulty. We can work our way back to a semblance of normality if we hold out and let the health system make it through the worst of it.” He added, “But now our own president is undoing all that work and preaching recklessness. Rather than lead us in taking on a difficult challenge, he is dragging us toward failure and suffering. Beyond belief.”

...This president does not have the capacity to listen to, synthesize, and internalize information that does not immediately serve his greatest needs: praise, fealty, adoration. “He finds it intolerable when those things are missing,” a clinical psychologist told me. “Praise, applause, and accolades seem to calm him and boost his confidence. There’s no room for that now, and so he’s growing irritable and needing to create some way to get some positive attention.”

She added that the pandemic and its economic fallout “overwhelm Trump’s capacity to understand, are outside of his ability to internalize and process, and [are] beyond his frustration tolerance. He is neither curious nor interested; facts are tossed aside when inconvenient or [when they] contradict his parallel reality, and people are disposable unless they serve him in some way.”

...But what happens to Trump psychologically and emotionally when things don’t turn around in the time period he wants? What happens if the tricks that have allowed him to walk away from scandal after scandal don’t work quite so well, if the doors of escape are bolted shut, and if it dawns on even some of his supporters-- people who will watch family members, friends, and neighbors contract the disease, some number of whom will die-- that no matter what Trump says, he can’t alter this epidemiological reality?

All of this would likely enrage him, and feed his paranoia.

As the health-care and economic crises worsen, Trump’s hallmarks will be even more fully on display. The president will create new scapegoats. He’ll blame governors for whatever bad news befalls their states. He’ll berate reporters who ask questions that portray him in a less-than-favorable light. He’ll demand even more cultlike coverage from outlets such as Fox News. Because he doesn’t tolerate relationships that are characterized by disagreement or absence of obeisance, before long we’ll see key people removed or silenced when they try to counter a Trump-centered narrative. He’ll try to find shiny objects to divert our attention from his failures.