As yet, it is a disease without a name. But the symptoms are obvious. The patient begins by downplaying a gathering national disaster — say a pandemic. The nation’s response to the crisis proves to be partially effective, avoiding the worst-case outcomes. The patient then takes this as an opportunity to complain that the threat was exaggerated all along.
Success in opposing a challenge is thus interpreted as evidence the challenge never existed.
Perhaps this should be known as the Ingraham illness — as in Laura Ingraham, who recently demanded “we want answers” because the casualty count from COVID-19 is lower than initially predicted. I’m more inclined to diagnose bubonic Bennettism — for William Bennett, who has likened COVID-19 to the flu, grumbled about national overreaction and claimed the global outbreak “is not a pandemic.” This, as the virus has infected more than 2 million people in at least 177 countries causing 136,000 deaths, with the U.S. leading the world in both the number of cases and fatalities. He has caught one of the more virulent strains of motivated reasoning.
As education secretary and as head of the National Endowment of the Humanities, Bennett often reminded us that liberals of great learning could be guilty of destructive silliness. Now he is demonstrating the same is true of cerebral conservatives.
Ideology does not provide protection from this syndrome. It is the same type of reasoning that declares the war against terrorism to be an overreaction to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. On that day, terrorist operations costing $500,000 killed nearly 3,000 people and resulted in an estimated $3.3 trillion in economic damage. An attack with chemical or biological weapons could have multiplied these results. Under President George W. Bush, the United States undertook a global campaign against terrorist networks and financing that was costly but, on the whole, successful. The effort was continued by President Barack Obama — employing different terminology and more drone strikes — with continued effect. Yet some insist that a lack of attacks on the American homeland proves the aggressive prevention of those attacks unnecessary.
In reality, there are a series of asymmetrical threats that America needs to prepare against. They include terrorism and pandemic disease. They also include cyber aggression against American democracy, criminal gangs of international reach, climate disruption and refugee flows that foster despair and radicalism. And there is the threat of nuclear proliferation. And the threat from an increasingly belligerent China.
We need American leaders who can prevent mass casualties from deadly pathogens and chew gum at the same time. In the last presidential election, Americans chose a leader who has problems even with the second half of that challenge. Donald Trump only inhabits the performative present. He neither learns from the past nor anticipates the future. He values blind loyalty above foresight or expertise. He was unprepared for the coronavirus and will leave the country less prepared for every gathering threat that does not arrive on his watch.
We need American leaders who won’t minimize dangers that don’t neatly fit their preconceptions. Leaders who take the world as it is, and plan for a world that could go wrong in a hundred horrible but predictable ways.
More than any other value or talent, Joe Biden must show preemptive competence on American security. I understand his current need to solidify support from his party’s left. I appreciate the appeal of his empathy and decency. But in light of the coronavirus, this is his one thing needful: to assure Americans that he and his White House team would protect the country from the full range of global dangers.
Now or soon, Biden should further reveal the depth and range of his defense and foreign policy advisers, chosen from both the Obama and George W. Bush administrations. (Of all the elements of the Bush administration, defense and foreign policy staffers are most likely to join a national unity team.) Biden should put them to work on a series of brilliantly boring policy addresses and white papers on emerging threats. And Biden should be actively persuading, through intermediaries, respected military and intelligence figures who served in the Trump administration to publicly support him. These endorsements could be announced to great effect around convention time, when the task turns to persuading independents and suburban Republicans.
When the accretions of the presidency are removed, national security, broadly defined, is the job. Trump has made a mess of it. Biden would do better. His task is to demonstrate it.
Michael Gerson’s email address is michaelgerson@washpost.com.
