The administration is often criticized for not nationalizing the overall response, but this would have required more in-depth knowledge of on-the-ground conditions in various localities than the federal government is ever going to have. As for pushing for reopening, the president was right to want to do it — lockdowns are a blunt-force instrument that have considerable downsides — but the way he went about expressing that view contributed to the unsteadiness of his leadership.
But he clearly believed — understandably enough, given the trajectory at the time and the prospect of warmer weather — that we were past the worst of the pandemic, and it was time to focus on other things. And he hasn’t changed his view now, even as the facts have changed. The outbreaks in the Sunbelt and the South may well never produce the kind of death rates we saw in the spring in the Northeast, but they are alarming and have rightly led to the reversal of parts of reopening.
The president should have realized by now that he can’t look past or talk by the virus, and as long as it is spreading in a significant way his (hugely important) priorities of jump-starting the economy and seeing schools reopen around the country are going to falter.
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