Florida Gov. DeSantis represents all that's wrong with America's coronavirus response.
33 states are experiencing rising caseloadsThese trends point to the difficulty political leaders face in encouraging socially responsible antipandemic behavior, such as staying home and wearing masks, among residents who have become weary of restriction, especially against the backdrop of limited or no progress against the virus.
In California, Newsom has had to accommodate local officials and constituents who resist these policies by allowing them to reopen commercial establishments and public spaces even where the coronavirus is plainly not under control.So what makes DeSantis a special case? It’s that he’s a governor who turned the battle against COVID-19 into a political issue.
The chief politicizer of the battle, of course, has been President Trump, who from the start has depicted the crisis as a personal affront, treated antivirus measures as political darts aimed at himself, utterly refused to set an example for the public by participating in them, and portrayed success against the pandemic as political validation.
Now that the battle is being lost and more than 120,000 Americans have perished from the coronavirus on his watch, Trump is largely missing in action, as is the rest of his administration. Consider how things might have turned out differently had he simply advised Americans to don masks in public and done so himself, as a model. Thousands of lives might have been saved and the notion that going about barefaced was some sort of political statement would have been stifled in its crib.DeSantis has played the part of an apprentice Donald Trump for much of the pandemic period. He personalized criticism of the state’s policies, as though it was all about him.
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