By Kevin D. Williamson
Friday, June 26, 2020
China. Cuba. Uganda. Check. The United States of America?
Not so fast, there.
Keeping up with the Joneses? When it comes to the
coronavirus epidemic, the United States cannot even keep up with those — what
did Donald Trump call them? — humid struggling countries that Americans rarely
condescend to take notice of.
Americans, along with Brazilians and Russians — that’s
the company we keep now — are on a list of those who are to be excluded from
entering the European Union as its member countries begin opening themselves up
to travel again. What is concerning Brussels is this: The EU countries are
seeing, on average, 14 new coronavirus cases daily per 100,000 population. The
Russians are seeing a lot more: 80 new cases daily per 100,000. And in the United
States, we currently are seeing 107 new cases daily per 100,000 population,
just short of eight times the EU rate of infection.
The EU criteria are pretty straightforward: If a country
is on average in comparable shape to the “EU+ area” (meaning the Schengen
states plus non-EU members Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland) or
in better shape, then the “welcome” mat will be rolled out; if a country is in
much worse shape — say, seven or eight times worse shape — then Europe
is not open for business. “No Vacancy.” Countries are judged on rate of new
infections plus trends in testing, contact tracing, and the like.
The European Union’s and the United States’ responses to
the epidemic were in some ways similar and important ways dissimilar. In the
EU, they talk a great deal about “solidarity,” and the major institutions of
the EU would have liked to have implemented and led a coordinated European
response to the novel coronavirus. As is turns out, the European Union is less
of a “United States of Europe” than some of its members had thought (or hoped)
it to be, and rather than a coordinated European response there was an
uncoordinated series of national responses. Suddenly, there were once again
national borders in Europe, and they were closed across the Schengen Area.
Rather than Brussels, the member states took the lead, and the EU response was
secondary and supplemental. This will have important long-term consequences for
that “solidarity” that Europeans talk about, which already has been tested
sorely by first the sovereign-debt crisis and then, especially, by the refugee
crisis.
In the United States, conversely, the states looked
immediately to Washington for guidance in the earliest days of the outbreak, to
institutions such as the Centers for Disease Control and to the Oval Office,
where President Trump initially treated the epidemic as a problem primarily for
the stock market to be solved via Twitter. Those national institutions were
able to provide only limited direction and assistance, and most of the
day-to-day responsibility for managing the crisis fell to state and local
governments, as, indeed, it ideally should. The member states of the European
Union, being national governments, were inclined and able to direct their own
efforts with relatively little input from Brussels; in the United States, the
notional “dual sovereignty” of the several states and the union is less and
less a reality and more and more a myth with each passing year. As Washington
increasingly dominates our national life, what can be done effectively and
independently in Sacramento or Austin is necessarily diminished.
Worse, the United States has generally less effective
government institutions at all levels than do the member states of the European
Union. Our largest city was crippled by an almost entirely incompetent response
to the epidemic under the so-called leadership of Mayor Bill de Blasio and
Governor Andrew Cuomo. But that shouldn’t be any surprise: It also costs New
York 40 times as much to build a mile of subway track as it costs in Madrid. It
is not a certainty that reasonably well-trained monkeys could do a
better job governing New York than de Blasio does, but it is a lively
possibility.
New York is not entirely alone. In such large and
politically different states as California, Texas, and Florida — our most
populous states — new cases are increasing at an alarming rate. At the
beginning of the crisis, Washington plainly was more worried about a recession
than an epidemic; now, in the middle of the crisis, there is intense pressure
to try to return things to normal in order to avoid even more severe economic
consequences. But if the epidemic goes uncontrolled, the economic consequences
are going to be severe. We won’t have evaded the public-health catastrophe or
the economic catastrophe. Texas, which was eager to reopen, is in retreat, with
Governor Greg Abbott declaring a “pause” in the attempt at normalization.
There is political hay to be made, of course. There has
been a concerted effort to make Florida’s Republican governor the poster boy
for incaution, but lefty California is in much the same boat. And surely
Americans need no Brussels-style lectures on “solidarity”? Well: They are
closing the borders in New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey, imposing a 14-day
quarantine on arrivals from coronavirus hot spots such as Texas, which imposed
in March a quarantine of its own on New York, New Jersey, Connecticut,
Washington, and California.
If the United States resembles Brazil and Russia in our
coronavirus response, it may be because we are coming to resemble those
countries in other ways as well: big, sprawling, corrupt, possibly
ungovernable, ensorcelled by nationalist nonsense, resentful, inward-looking. A
world long accustomed to American leadership during times of genuine global
crisis is not looking toward Washington with hope or expectation but with pity
and contempt. In some countries, they will see scandal in our institutional
failures. In some capitals — in Beijing, for instance — they will see
opportunity. Perhaps we will rally and show that we are, after all, up to the
task. But there are few reasons for optimism right now.
In this crisis, the European Union has shown itself to be a non-union of functioning states, while the United States has been revealed as a union of non-functioning states. It is an imperfect comparison, but an illuminating one.
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