Tales of the Presidency
But what we’ve learned from the tick-tock of the first days of the crisis, is that there were a critical three to five days post-landfall when the President and the White House simply weren’t engaged. The President was in the midst of a self-created blow up over the NFL. He wasn’t physically at the White House, which was highly significant when combined with his inattention. I’m confident that people at FEMA were kicking into gear regardless. But the nature of the crisis was simply beyond FEMA’s capacity to handle alone and FEMA itself was stretched thin by two other crises in Texas and Florida.
After that 3-5 day period of inattention, the administration
did begin to kick into gear. I’m sure the response remains inadequate. But it also seems clear that the response did shift substantially after day 5 or so. By then critical time had been lost. Things that could have been done on day one could no longer be done or, more specifically, they could no longer have as great an effect. They lost critical time.
It’s in a very different category. But Trump’s personal focus has clearly been mostly on defending himself and attacking his critics. In itself that’s only optics. It’s unclear how much that continues to hobble the management of recovery efforts or whether that is all underway regardless. But any sensible person would understand that you can’t ever say ‘
We’re doing great‘ or “
It’s going great” in this kind of situation even if you’re doing everything possible and as best as you possibly can. But that sort of human, commonsense understanding is completely beyond this President. Some things can never be fixed.
Tales of the Presidency