Most of our political debate centers around an unwillingness of the American people to accept the fact that big government doesn't work. For some reason we've got it stuck in our collective heads it should work. This leads to silly ideas gaining hold, like draining the swamp or, a perennial favorite, that we're not getting what we pay for out of government. (This year we'll get fifty percent more government than what we paid for, by the way.) I suppose we argue about the presidency because it gives us something to argue about while ignoring the results of past presidencies. Neither of now the last two would ever shut up, were equally as capricious in their governing, and left the nation, if anything, worse off for the experience of having elected them. We might be doing this wrong.
The great panic of 2020 may, in retrospect, offer us some needed reminders upon the merits of federalism. (If every state had a $160 million center for disease control we'd have had multiple versions of coronavirus-19 test kits available by February. It takes an $8 billion behemoth to let the development of one somehow slip through the cracks.) As it is, a 2021 which is fast upon us will reveal which states best dealt with the viral epidemic. What we'll then be dealing with is not so much a virus, as it is the consequences of responses to the virus. It'll take some time for calm to be restored and more level heads to recognize what we knew as recently as 2019; there isn't a whole lot we can do about viral outbreaks, save physically distance ourselves from one another, protect the most vulnerable first, and reinvigorate our practice of basic personal hygiene. There will then be ample evidence, which should not have been needed, that such viral outbreaks once begun cannot be controlled, but their effects mitigated. That a vaccine has been developed so quickly, in the early spring actually, should be chalked up to luck, if just for planning purposes.
And then maybe we'll ask within the several states why our hospitals faced being overwhelmed, and why so many states were forced to rely upon governors with unchecked powers. If we're lucky we'll acknowledge which did better than others, while we also acknowledge which created more problems than they addressed. If we're smart we'll avoid the fawning great leader idolatry for which we seem lately so fond of, and let the chips fall where they may. The viral outbreak will quickly fade, if not nearly fast enough, because that's what happens when herd immunity develops, and we can safely ignore what will reliably be an anti-vax crowd, such as we shall always have with us. The economic effects will not so quickly fade, nor will be the trillions in lost economic activity, which we need remind ourselves is the only proven antidote to both poverty and disease. We might find time to ask why, with all our resources, we intentionally chose to inflict the brunt of the mortal burden upon our elderly.
If we're even a bit more introspective than is our normal wont, we might also acknowledge that state governments matter, and how they're run means far more to us than how is a federal government which promises much but delivers so much less when it matters. They're the ones to ask how come we're running out of doctors and nurses, and why there were shortages of protective gear for those hospitals. The federal government will form a commission upon the matter to study it, the results of which can be reliably forecast as requiring more quantity and quality of federal government, as if we'll undergo an epiphany upon how to make a federal government better. States, on the other hand, will have an opportunity to make things better for the future, though a pessimist might observe that most will punt the matter by simply demanding more support, read money, from the federal government. We should not accept that, nor should we accept the status quo, for surely we can do better.
We now return you to the ongoing argument over which fool should be our president. Somehow we deserve this.