Ian Welsh Muses On "The Terrible Impulse To Rally Around Bad Leaders In A Crisis"

"When do we get back to normal? I don't think we get back to normal," said my governor earlier this week. (After a long "standby" period, the action starts at 36:13 of the clip.) "I think," he went on to say, "we get to a new normal," adding later, "Let's make sure we're getting the positive lesson, not the negative one." What he had to say, I thought, was pretty darned smart. Even Ian, as we'll see, allows, "He sounds good on TV." There's more to think about, though.

-by Ken

Quick show of hands:

Raise yours if you have not been depressed to see SwampThing's approval ratings soar -- all the way to the majestic 50-percent mark, and maybe (shudder) beyond! --- even as he's been bungling, or maybe cunningly exploiting?, every aspect of the pandemic crisis. And I mean bungling, or exploiting?, not just as badly as the mind could imagine, but maybe worse than at least this mind could have imagined. And here I was thinking that one of my mind's chiefest capabilities is imagining down to the deepest depths of the abyss. Live and learn, I guess.

HI, EVERYONE! I HOPE YOU'RE OK!

And you're all coping, as best any of us can, with the stuff that's going on around us. All we can do is, you know, the best we can do -- about the things in our lives we can each do something about -- that and, I guess, keep trying to expand the catalog of things we can do something about. And I guess that's going to have to be good enough. Isn't it at least better than letting ourselves be paralyzed by hopelessness? Maybe sometime I'll try to write a little more about how I'm coping, but for now I'm mindful that one thing that keeps me going is the kind of human contact we're still permitted -- most abundantly, contact of the online kind.

One thing such contact can do is help me feel that I haven't lost all my marbles. For me, then, it qualified as providential that Ian Welsh on Tuesday delivered a spectacular blogpost called "The Terrible Impulse To Rally Around Bad Leaders In A Crisis." So it's not just me thinking vaguely that this sort of thing does seem to happen a lot, especially in times of, you know, crisis.

I have to confess that in this crisis I've slowly come to accept, kind of respect, perhaps even admire -- what the heck, let me say it, feel almost grateful for Governor Cuomo's now-perpetual televisual presence. Indeed, rewatching some of the appearance preserved in the YouTube clip above, which I'd happened to watch live, I thought again that it sounded darned smart, much of it extraordinary.

My goodness, could what Governor Cuomo had to say be more different in its informed contact with reality from what we hear regularly from other gov't sources, not least the, er, highest-up gov't source? Again, even Ian W credits that "he sounds good on TV." But this isn't enough for Ian to cut him any slack. Of course slack-cutting isn't what we look to Ian for, and the rest of what he has to say about the governor is utterly legit, and way too important to be forgotten.

At least, if we look at the governor's rising approval ratings, it's possible to respond with something other than utter despair. There's no imaginable mitigation for the two "sad clown"s Ian goes on to write about -- aka the second most important leader in the Western world and the most powerful life form in the known world.

So, Andrew Cuomo, the Governor of New York, had his approval ratings soar 30% during the Covid-19 pandemic. There is talk of him becoming US President (presumably this means making him Biden’s VP candidate, then having Biden step aside.)

He sounds good on TV.

Cuomo is attempting to cut funding for Medicaid because he refused to tax the rich, as the crisis continues. A panel Cuomo appointed has recommended 400 billion in cuts to hospitals. He repeatedly said New York City has too many hospital beds. He has let prisoners in New York jails stay in them even as he was warned they would be breeding grounds for the disease. He left going to isolation at least 2 weeks too long.

In other words he’s a neoliberal who wants to cut key resources even during a crisis, and incompetent to boot. Back after 9/11 we saw the same thing happen with Bush Jr. Bush not only ignored warnings about Al-Qaeda’s intention to strike in the US, the actual government response on 9/11 was terrible—the US could not get armed jets into the air, only unarmed ones. It would have been a hilarious display of incompetence if it weren’t for the consequences. Canada had armedjets up before the US: I joked that if we invaded the US we could have destroyed the entire US air force on the ground. (Then given you universal health care.)

Bush was an incompetent, stupid, and mentally challenged (listen to his speeches. He was impaired.) He used the blank check given to him by the rally-round effect to take the country to war with Iraq, a disaster which has spawned disaster after disaster. The money and resources used in Iraq should have been spent on other things: almost on anything else: and the deaths and maiming and rape and torture are his legacy, and the legacy of Americans who ran to an incompetent leader.

Something similar is happening in Britain. Boris Johnson, the PM, has had ratings of his party soar. Boris is the fellow who originally wanted to not do any social distancing at all, based on a herd immunity theory which amounted to “let the maximum number of people die and the hospital capacity be overwhelmed.” Personally Boris bragged about shaking hands with infected Covid-19 patients, then going on and shaking hands with everybody else he met. Personally a typhoid Mary. The Conservative party has spent 10 years defunding the NHS, to the point where it has one of the lowest numbers of hospital beds per capita in the developed world.

Yet Johnson and the Conservative party’s ratings have gone up.

Trump’s ratings, while they have not soared, have gone up, and Trump’s Covid reponse has been beyond incompetent, into delusional Emperor has no clothes territory.

This tendency to rally around even incompetent leaders makes one despair for humanity. The correct response in all cases is contempt and an attempt, if possible, at removal of the corrupt and venal people in charge. Certainly no one should be approving of the terrible jobs they have done.

All three have or will use their increased power to do horrible things. The Coronavirus bailout bill passed by Congress and approved by Trump is a huge bailout of the rich, with crumbs for the poor and middle class. So little, in fact, that there may be widespread hunger soon. Cuomo is pushing forward with his cuts, and I’m sure Johnson will live down to expectations.

Incompetence and ideological blindness to the good of the people are, then, encouraged by the behaviour of the masses. This, it seems, is what they want.

We break that, or over the crises and catastrophes to come (and the 21st century will be a century of tragedy) we will lose billions we needn’t have.

DWT UPDATE: Don't Worry, The Polls On Trump Are Back To Normal

Change Research just came out with new polling showing Trump's job approval ratings sinking back down to where they were before the pandemic.