The Leaders Who Passed the Coronavirus Test; The New York Times, April 8, 2020

Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times; The Leaders Who Passed the Coronavirus Test

California, Ohio and Washington moved early to slow the virus. Here’s what other states can learn from them.

""In February and early March, America’s political and business leaders began to face a crisis of potentially catastrophic proportions. Many failed the test.

As the coronavirus crisis emerged, the president dithered and downplayed, promising a magical end to a problem he did not appear to understand. The mayor of New York reveled in unscientific happy talk, assuring his citizens that life would remain normal. And many in the pundit class, including yours truly, got the earliest calls disastrously wrong.

This is the story we know — a story of institutional failure, of chaos and incoordination, a tragedy that has seemed to unmake the most powerful country in the world.

Yet failure is not the entire account of America’s response to the coronavirus. Because while politicians in Washington, D.C., fumbled the federal role, Washington State was closing restaurants and bars. While New York City slow-walked, the San Francisco Bay Area, and then the rest of California, was ordering its residents to “shelter in place.” And as the Republican president offered meaningless bromides, two Republican governors, Mike DeWine of Ohio and Larry Hogan of Maryland, were among those leading the nation’s first statewide school closures.""