Like every plumber will tell you. Professor Tyler Cowen of George Mason University comments on the United States reaction to the Covid-19 outbreak:
“In the United States, as you know, we had a solid two months’ warning and did nothing. And even now, in terms of getting testing and masks set up and the like, there are incredible delays,” he said. “So we might finally overcome those problems. But, you know, with climate change, you need a 20-to-30-year ramping up for it to work.”
Cowen said it’s inexplicable why the federal government, given all the warnings and evidence from China of a spreading pandemic, did not move more rapidly.
“You know, Trump was terrible, but you can’t just pin it on him. It’s far more systemic than that. The NBA [which suspended its season on March 11] really gets so much credit. I would put the NBA in charge of fighting climate change at this point.” [WaPo]
But for those who’ve watched Trump’s moves from Day 1, this shouldn’t be a surprise. Trump has multiple pathways of communication into the bureaucracy: personal behavior modeling, firing personnel who act appropriately, power to nominate Cabinet positions and the influence to get them approved, power to nominate sub-Cabinet positions etc, option to leave important positions empty, use of “acting” personnel to head important agencies.
All of these communicate confusion and fear to the bureaucracy, and that’s why we see the supposedly all-powerful “deep state” having to be defended by our vastly incompetent President for its failures. If it was truly a Deep State, it would have pushed Trump aside and dealt with the matter as the national security threat that it is; instead, Trump remains the incoherent head of the worst Administration in modern memory.
So why is Cowen confused? Beats me. It seems obvious to me that the failures we’re seeing in our best institutions are because they have not received the maintenance that such institutions require.
