The Terrible Impulse to Rally Around Bad Leaders in a Crisis

So, Andrew Cuomo, the Governor of New York, had his approval ratings soar 30 percent during the Covid-19 pandemic. There is talk of him becoming the 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 two 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–on almost anything else–and the death, maiming, rape, and torture are his legacy, as well as the legacy of Americans who ran to an incompetent leader.

Something similar is happening in Britain. Boris Johnson, the PM, has had his party’s ratings soar. Boris is the fellow who originally didn’t want to 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 ten 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-19 reponse has been beyond incompetent, sliding 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 of these leaders 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 either break this cycle, or over the crises and catastrophes to come (and the 21st century will be a century of tragedy), we will lose billions of people we needn’t have.

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