420,008 pandemic deaths in America, and it turns out that the outgoing President had no plan at all for getting vaccines to the people who need them, and the incoming team is going to have to start from scratch. I knew from the beginning that putting an inexperienced real estate developer in charge of one of the most complex organizations on earth was not going to go well; I knew there would be bumps in the road as the clueless tycoon learned the basics of the job he had taken on; but I did hope he would rise to the challenge and surprise us all. He surprised me, at any rate—I never thought anyone could so blitheringly incompetent as this guy proved to be. I mean, the president of the goddamn United States has the ability to call on the world’s greatest scientists, foreign affairs experts, diplomats, military strategists—whatever is needed—to help him stumble through the affairs of state, so there’s no excuse for this level of incompetency. If somebody really can’t do the job he was elected to, he at least has the resources to fake it.
Even with expert advice things are chancy, as Kennedy found out with the Bay of Pigs fiasco. But ignoring the people who know what they’re talking about is a recipe for disaster, as Reagan found out with the AIDS epidemic, or as Bush II found out with Nine Eleven. Listening only to the echoes of your own voice spouting bromides you’d heard some popular pundit expound is a road to nowhere.
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