Thank God for Career Politicians: The Coronavirus Pandemic Demonstrates the Importance of Political Insiders
I have no idea how long our national lockdown will last, or how many Americans will lose their lives to the Coronavirus. I will leave speculating about these matters to the professionals and to the armchair epidemiologists in my Facebook feed.
“Instead of worrying about these questions, I have spent my time thinking about what political lessons we can learn as a nation from this crisis. Of all the numerous lessons that the Coronavirus stands to teach us, I hope Americans are left with a greater appreciation of the importance of experienced political insiders in our system of government.”
Instead of worrying about these questions, I have spent my time thinking about what political lessons we can learn as a nation from this crisis. Of all the numerous lessons that the Coronavirus stands to teach us, I hope Americans are left with a greater appreciation of the importance of experienced political insiders in our system of government.
People will have their own thoughts on the policies and character of Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, and Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio. These three governors are dissimilar to each other in dozens of important ways. They come from different parts of the country, belong to different parties, and are in different age brackets, but they all have two things in common: they are experienced career politicians and they have led incredibly competent and aggressive responses to the Coronavirus epidemic.
Gov. Cuomo is the son of a former New York Governor. He served in the upper leadership of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development for eight years, was the Attorney General of New York for three years, and has been governor of the same state since 2011.
Gov. Newsom has held public office since 1997, including seven years spent on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, seven years as the mayor of the same city, and eight years as Lieutenant Governor of California. He became governor in 2019.
“Dr. Fauci has been the head of a government agency most people likely didn’t even know existed until recency for six presidencies. He is the definition of a Washington insider, and yet it is to such an insider that all eyes have turned during this time of crisis and uncertainty.”
Gov. DeWine has worked in the public sector almost continuously since 1977. He has been a prosecutor, a state senator, a member of the House of Representatives, the Lieutenant Governor of Ohio, a United States Senator, and the Attorney General of the state of Ohio. Like Gov. Newsom, Gov. DeWine became the governor of his state in 2019.
Source: Business Insider
Calling these three men political insiders is a gross understatement. They each are career politicians who have spent their entire professional lives in and around the levers of government power. As a result, they have developed a very specific, and underrated, skill set: they know how to use government. These men understand how government works, how different government agencies and departments interact with each other and with the public, and what government actions are and are not capable of accomplishing. Put simply, these three governors know how to bend government to their will to accomplish their goals.
Our current political climate spurns people like these three governors. The populist spirit of our age hungers for the political outsider and the neophyte, and loathes the experienced, the entrenched and the competent. It is this spirit which animates the ascendance of President Donald Trump on the Right and Bernie Sanders on the Left. It is this spirit which has deluded so many into thinking that the biggest problem facing our nation is the corruption of our political elites, and that hairbrained schemes like constitutionally imposed term limits would completely improve that problem.
The Coronavirus outbreak lays naked before us how short sighted and misguided this populist anti-establishment sentiment is. Dealing with the Coronavirus outbreak requires a degree of administrative competency and institutional intelligence that no political outsider or newcomer could ever achieve. Of all the governors in the nation, Gov. Cuomo, Gov. Newsom, and Gov. DeWine have been some of the most proactive, aggressive and competent in their responses to this virus, precisely because they are career politicians.
These three governors are not the only examples of the virtues of career politicians in times of crises. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the immunologist who has become one of the more visible members of the President’s Coronavirus task force, has been the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984. Dr. Fauci has been the head of a government agency most people likely didn’t even know existed until recency for six presidencies.
He is the definition of a Washington insider, and yet it is to such an insider that all eyes have turned during this time of crisis and uncertainty.
Though none of us really know when, someday this crisis will come to an end. When it does, I hope that the examples of political insiders and career politicians like Gov. Cuomo, Gov. Newsom, Gov. DeWine and Dr. Fauci and others will put to death the populist, anti-establishment spirit of our age. If we learn one lesson from this pandemic, let us remember the importance of having an experienced and capable hand on the wheel when our nation sails through rough waters.