Ted Turner said what our country’s leaders should do in this time of crisis. “Either lead, follow, or get out of the way.”
There are four national leaders who bear most responsibility for the response to the COVID-19 crisis – President Trump, Vice President Pence, Speaker of the House Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader McConnell. Only one of them has shown the capacity for national leadership in crisis – a leadership that expresses concern for the entire nation, for those who are suffering as well as those who are responding to needs, for acting promptly and decisively.
The situation is clear. It is well past time to relieve our commander in chief because of the catastrophic failure of leadership.
When it comes to matters of policy, disregard for national security has been at the top of the list even before the Trump administration began. Trump and his adviser Michael Flynn misbehaved during the initial presidential briefing given by the Obama administration. Early in the administration, we learned that the new president disrespected the daily briefing as too involved and too loaded with information. It had to be dumbed down to a few bullet points to please him. Soon the briefing began leaving out news that might upset him with the reality that clashed with his preferred interpretations.
A responsible Vice President and cabinet would have used the 25th amendment when at Helsinki the President of the United States openly endorsed the lies of our national enemy, President Putin, over the unanimous conclusions of all our intelligence services. What followed was a systematic campaign against the intelligence capabilities of the FBI and the investigative responsibilities of the Department of Justice – because they kept finding evidence of his personal negligence and wrongdoing. This culminated in betrayal of our ally Ukraine in its fight against Russia as he tried to extort a new president into announcing investigations to help the upcoming presidential campaign against Joe Biden. Dedicated civil servants brought out Trump’s perfidy so persuasively that Speaker Pelosi found it necessary to launch impeachment proceedings.
If Mitch McConnell had been a patriot who served our country first, President Trump would have been removed through the impeachment trial for mishandling his national security responsibilities. Immediately after that opportunity was missed, Trump again failed to listen to national security experts and scientists as he recklessly sought revenge against those who testified against him. Now the American public watches daily briefings in which a dysfunctional, responsibility-dodging President claims success while refusing obvious leadership measures as our national crisis grows ever worse. As nurses, ER doctors, and EMTs call publicly for desperate measures, a disconnected president continues to go after his national security critics and to dismiss all complaints as coming from people who are never satisfied or as motivated by politics. The term Inspector General has become a dirty word to him, for it always means irresponsible opposition to the greatest president ever – as he sees it.
If Trump had been removed, a President Pence may have shown more ability so that our incredible death toll could have been avoided. However, the continued sycophancy of the Vice President to this President, especially as he has more and more blood on his hands, proves his unworthiness for the job of commander in chief. This week before Easter, the president stands knee-deep in the blood of those who could have been spared by presidential leadership. As he continues to hamper national action, he is likely to be waist deep the week after Easter. Still, there is no national strategy in the midst of an emergency and no thought of planning for what should come when the pandemic lets up.
If he is a patriot and has any backbone left, Vice President Pence will demand cabinet action to enact the 25th amendment and thereby relieve Trump of command. Then he should immediately resign and turn the job over to Speaker Pelosi to rescue our nation in what would be a very short but impactful term of office.
Hillary Clinton is the only female American political figure who has been maligned more than Nancy Pelosi. So-called Christians, many of whom are Republican officeholders, stand behind a callous, irreligious president as they smear a devout Roman Catholic who lives out Christian values by insisting on putting families, children, and the underprivileged ahead of corporate interests.
Nancy Pelosi is someone who plans carefully, balances conflicting forces to bring them together in positive actions and acts decisively in times of crisis. She is the only person among the top four national leadership positions capable of leading America through a crisis worse than 9/11 or Pearl Harbor.
How many hundreds of thousands must die before Pence and McConnell think and act as patriots, not Republicans who are willing to tolerate even Donald Trump to retain power? As real patriots, they can help mobilize the nation behind a leader with capacity for the job. She can also be counted on not to seek a full term in office but to serve a pivotal role in getting our country out of a deep hole and leaving better prospects for a newly elected commander in chief in January 2021.
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Edward G. Simmons is a Vanderbilt Ph.D. who teaches history at Georgia Gwinnett College. He is an author of two articles in the forthcoming The Spiritual Danger of Donald Trump: 30 Christian Evangelicals on Justice, Truth, and Moral Integrity edited by Ronald J. Sider and being published by Wipf and Stock in the summer of 2020.
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