Stevenson’s army, March 23

I’m getting very frustrated with the administration’s slow,disjointed approach to the pandemic, so let me rant.

Who’s in charge? Ideally there should be an experienced bureaucratic organizer who knows what different agencies can do and has the backing of the president to get things done. [Think Harry Hopkins, Jim Baker,] HHS, CDC, FDA, FEMA all have strengths, but they need to be coordinated and prioritized — and they should have been activated on January 24, not March 13.  And the core team should not be spending several hours a day in meetings, especially not listening to a ruminating president who isn’t listening to them.
Take the Defense Production Act, a powerful tool that has been invoked in name only by the president. It could do so much to get production  of key items going and supply chain glitches solved. Instead, the president for ideological reasons doesn’t want to interfere with the market, so he has an ad hoc White House operation where Peter Navarro and a 2 star from the Joint Staff take phone calls from businesses who have good ideas to help, both the country and their profits. This is a lobbyist-led operation when it should be government-led.
I think Congress will come through with a bipartisan bill that, yes, will contain a lot of waste. That’s the price to avoid catastrophe. I think the Democrats see they have leverage to get more of their priorities, since Trump and the GOP will more likely be blamed for inaction or delay. And for logistical reasons, the House would like to pass a agreed measure by voice vote so they don’t have to bring all members back and fight over details. They also remember when bipartisanship was dropped by the GOP in the past. They won’t be fooled again.
Meanwhile, there’s an encouraging report in NYT that helps identify infected people not yet showing symptoms: almost all first suffer a loss of sense of taste or smell. [If that happens to someone you know, they should self-quarantine.]
Look what has happened to the Peace Corps: volunteers brought home and fired.
WSJ reports Marine Corps plans to reshape for the China threat.

My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).