To the Editor:

In the next day or two, we will encounter a terrible coincidence. The American death toll from Covid-19 will surpass the total number of Americans killed in Vietnam, officially listed as 58,220. This Thursday also marks the 45th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, the ignominious end to our war in Vietnam. I remember that day since I was a New York Times correspondent in Saigon at the time and was evacuated by helicopter.

It now seems likely that these two great tragedies will be linked by something fundamental about presidential leadership. The historical record shows that Lyndon Johnson decided to commit U.S. forces in Vietnam even though he had been warned that the war was not winnable, and Richard Nixon continued the bombing there despite similar advice against it.

Donald Trump ignored warnings from his own intelligence agencies about the coronavirus months ago and did little to prepare the country.

Johnson and Nixon both tried to overpower facts by bending them to their will. Now Donald Trump has chosen to go down the same fateful road with oddly synchronous numbers of deaths so far.