Editorial: Let's have a 'cease-fire' from news conference sniping
The daily press briefings from the president and many state governors, including Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, are intended as opportunities for government's top leaders to inform the public about the state of the crisis and reassure people that resources are being marshaled to address it.
How well individual leaders are succeeding in these goals is open to legitimate debate and naturally requires some public reflection. But one feature of the conferences is particularly unhelpful and deserves special attention. That is the potential to let political or personal rancor overshadow the informational value of the conferences.
On Sunday, President Donald Trump provided a pointedly relevant example as he announced plans to send 600 ventilators to hard-hit Illinois hospitals and prepare McCormick Place to serve as a makeshift hospital to handle overflow patients.
"Amazingly, 600 (ventilators) will be going or have gone to Illinois and I mean, there's a governor I hear him complaining all the time, Pritzker," Trump said. "He's always complaining, and yet ... we're building a 2,500-bed hospital in McCormick Place ... And we're helping to staff it and probably will end up staffing it because he's not able to do what he's supposed to be able to do as governor. He has not performed well."
At his press conference, Pritzker noted that he has asked the federal government for 4,000 items of personal protection equipment and ventilators, and took another swipe at the federal response, though his tone was somewhat more respectful than the president's.
"Look, I understand, nobody could have predicted what happened here, perhaps, or very few people," he said. "On the other hand, they had this information before the states did."
In an interview with CNN earlier in the day, Pritzker was more sharply critical, accusing the Trump administration of failing to react to intelligence it was receiving as early as January.
"If they had started in February building ventilators, getting ready for this pandemic, we would not have the problems we are having today and, frankly, very many fewer people would die," he told Jake Tapper.
Without doubt, the actions of the federal and the state governments during this crisis deserve scrutiny, and there is a place for analysis or criticism - including by political leaders - of specific efforts. The issue has specific immediacy as the states find themselves competing for health equipment because of delays at the federal level. But that place is not behind a press briefing room podium, where leaders at all levels ought to be building public confidence that they are concentrating on the crisis at hand and working with others, even political adversaries, to overcome it.
Surely, leadership of this nature by someone who considers himself a "war president" must come from the top. And while the frustration of governors in state's being hardest hit by the crisis is understandable, there comes a time when constantly repeating it sounds more like political point making than assertive problem solving.
When all this is over, we seem headed for still-deeper debate over the appropriate roles of the state and federal governments. And that debate certainly needs to be had.
But to see political leaders snapping at each other with personal barbs at their daily "informational" meetings increases public divisions at a time when we especially need more unity and decreases public confidence that leaders are placing the general welfare above all other concerns.