What a split screen we had yesterday.
On one side was Dr. Anthony Fauci, a man who dedicated his life to public service and science, forced to invoke the Fifth Amendment as he faced a barrage of insults, outrage, and lies from Republicans. It was ostensibly a Senate hearing about the COVID pandemic, but in reality it was a spectacle staged by a group of rabid opportunists seeking the favor of their cult leader, more akin to a demagogic show trial than the orderly proceedings of a healthy democracy.
And on the other side of the split screen was that cult leader in his gilded cage, moping behind his massive wooden desk, surrounded by lackeys, yes-men, and puppeteers, flailing to control an out-of-control war he started without thought, reason, legality, or sense.
One of the inherent struggles of democracy is that it recognizes that all human beings are fallible, and yet must contend with the reality that human beings must still be the source of governance. It was a tension the founders of this nation understood well, which is why they feared the tyranny of a monarch and the concentration of power in too few hands, and why they instituted a system of checks and balances.
As James Madison famously wrote in Federalist No. 51:
If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
The progress of science requires its own form of checks and balances. Scientific findings are subjected to peer review, and results must be reproducible by others. Just because a scientist has a long history of notable research and accomplishment does not mean that scientist is necessarily right. Often, when working at the boundaries of what is known, there is passionate disagreement about what the data might suggest until a firmer picture comes into focus.
I am struck by how rapidly the COVID pandemic seems to have evaporated from our collective memory. To be sure, it lingers on for the millions who lost loved ones or continue to suffer from lasting symptoms. But I struggle as well to summon those days of terror: doctors in hazmat suits, mobile morgues, and patients drowning in their own bodily secretions. We watched scientists identify and then struggle to understand a novel pathogen, witnessing the complexity of the scientific process in real time, along with the urgent race to develop a vaccine and the difficult weighing of risks in the policy sphere as the world shut down.
If we had the benefit of serious people running our government, we would be conducting a serious review of what happened and the lessons we could learn about preparing for another pandemic, which is sure to come. We could examine the mistakes we made with the invaluable perspective of hindsight without demonizing those who were trying to contend with a natural disaster of unimaginable scale.
A search for wisdom, insight, and truth is, of course, the very opposite of the purpose behind the Republican harassment of Dr. Fauci. Their aim is not to learn from the past, but to rewrite it, distracting from the present while shifting blame for the failures of their own leadership when the pandemic began.
At the same time, this same group of senators, and the party they represent, has surrendered every meaningful check on power to a man they treat as the king he so desperately wishes to be.
Whereas we had no choice as a country about whether we would have to fight COVID, we very much had a choice about whether we would choose to fight Iran.
We had a choice about whether to start a chain of events that would leave an enemy regime emboldened and defiant, holding the global flow of oil hostage and wreaking havoc on the lives of people around the world. We had a choice about launching missiles and bombs without understanding how those being attacked might respond, what our own vulnerabilities were, or how we could possibly exit without leaving ourselves far worse off than when we started.
With COVID, we had some of our finest minds, dedicated public servants, first responders, and frontline workers racing to confront and contain a deadly pathogen. With this war, we have fools, grifters, and con men unleashing death and destruction without regard for the good of the country or the world, guided only by their own pique, power, and profiteering.
In the best of times, it is a nearly impossible task to govern a nation as big, varied, and complex as ours in a complicated world. We need leaders who understand that expertise should be valued and who have enough humility to recognize that none of us has a monopoly on wisdom. We need checks on power and a belief in the importance of hard data and analysis. We need public servants who are dedicated to the good of the nation.
We need these qualities and safeguards especially when we have to respond to an unfathomable crisis like COVID. And we need them to avoid stumbling and fumbling into an unmitigated disaster of choice like a war with Iran.
About the only thing Fauci and Trump have in common is that neither one is perfect. The imbalance lies in the scale of their imperfections and in the relative insidiousness of their instincts. One spent a life dedicated to healing others; the other was guided only by his own desires.
We can clearly see where each of these paths ultimately leads. The health, strength, and well-being of our nation depend on elevating the ranks of those who serve others and making sure we never again elect someone interested only in serving himself.
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