After the attack on Pearl Harbor, FDR told Americans in 1942, “The news is going to get worse and worse before it gets better and better, and the American people deserve to have it straight from the shoulder.” Such directness is the sign of a confident leader. FDR was saying that the tunnel would be long and dark before anyone would begin to see any light. Roosevelt was indeed a war president, while Trump likes to play one on TV. A few weeks ago, when the number of coronavirus cases was beginning to spike, Trump warned that America was facing its “toughest week,” saying, “There will be death.” Well, that is pretty direct. But, of course, it is also clueless, entirely lacking in empathy or emotional intelligence. Trump spoke of “very bad numbers” without any acknowledgment that those numbers are real people with families and loved ones for whom their death is anything but a statistic. FDR never talked about combat deaths in terms of statistics. On the day of D-Day, FDR offered a prayer to Americans: “Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic…and to set free a suffering humanity.” Yes, when Trump reads from a teleprompter, he intones such phrases as, “Your pain is our pain. We mourn as one national family. Our country has come together.” Fine words, but he reads them without a scintilla of sincerity. Eloquence is a wonderful thing in politics, and not everyone has the gift. But this may be our first president without a single atom of poetry in him.

FDR also projected optimism by being unruffled in the face of crisis. With his cigarette holder pointed upward like the trajectory of a rising graph, his V-for-victory salute, his jaunty smile, he projected a never-let-them-see-you-sweat confidence. FDR wore pounds of steel braces to give a speech or get in or out of a car, but would never ever project self-pity. Eleanor Roosevelt said of her husband that even after he had been struck with polio, “I never heard him complain.” Trump, on the other hand, seems to make himself the primary victim of the pandemic, as though it was aimed directly at him. No matter the crisis, he is always the first casualty. Instead of talking about the real victims—those who are ill and those who have died—he spends much of his daily press conferences blaming and accusing others for failures that are attributable to him. FDR had his own grievances with the press, and once complained that he thought 85% of the press was against him. But he would never let the public see him wounded by the press or publicly label them “the enemy of the people.”

Part of the reason presidents attempt to project optimism is so Americans will feel confident in their government. Roosevelt was also intent on changing the perception of government from a distant and indifferent bystander to a direct means of support for people in trouble. Roosevelt said the public welfare was the great duty of the state, and he attempted to give people confidence in the federal government. That has been difficult for Trump to do. From his boasting that avoiding taxes was the “smart” thing to do to his offhand remark last month that the federal government was “not a shipping clerk,” his disdain for the idea that government has a role in the public welfare has been painfully obvious. Trump is a manifestation of three decades of Republicans running against government. His understanding of federalism is minimal, and he tasks the states with jobs that should be carried out by the administration. Now, when he wants people to trust government to do the right thing, he has a hard time making that argument. You can project cheap optimism and unsupported confidence as much as you want, but reality is a stubborn thing. Ultimately—and particularly in a crisis—confidence in a leader comes from one thing: competence.

Richard Stengel is the author of Information Wars: How We Lost the Global Battle Against Disinformation and What We Can Do About It.

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