History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes Mark Twain
As much as people in the media love to wax poetic about the brazenness and originality of Trump’s corruption, it’s nothing new. As Rachel Maddow lays out in her book, Bag Man, Donald Trump’s criminality is nothing more than an updated repetition of the shenanigans of former Vice President Spiro Agnew, but pulled off by a self indulgent 3 year old.
And now we are presented with yet another nightmare scenario provided by Trump, but if you look back in history, there’s actually another extremely close precedent for it. And believe it or not, the corrective action needed is identical.
Let’s face it, the rollout of the coronavirus vaccine is, in polite terms, a Himalayan orgy. Trump created Operation Warp Speed to expedite the creation and testing of a vaccine, and to maximize the distribution of that vaccine once it became available. In its pure form, the idea is a good one, but we’re talking about Trump here. As with everything else, Trump had not a care in the world for the logistics. Trump made a fanfare announcement, stuffed the panel with empty suits who knew nothing about what they were doing, and moved on. Trump appointed a general who can’t even read a spread sheet correctly in charge of logistics, and as we speak, hundreds of thousands of doses are sitting on shelves, instead of in arms.
Fortunately, history has already shown us that there is a logical solution to this problem, and a natural candidate to fix it. You want to get those goddang shots off of the shelves, distributed, and into people’s arms most riki-tik? Here’s how you do it. On January 21st, President needs to pick up the phone, and make the call. He needs to call up and ask retired Lt General Russell Honore, and ask him to strap on the spurs one more time, and ride to the rescue.
Almost 20 years ago, Hurricane Katrina absolutely devastated the entire Gulf coast. Much like Trump, Bush clumsily treated the disaster as more of a political problem than a humanitarian crisis, and turned the response over to ham handed, unqualified underlings. And ended up with the kind of existential crisis that could have sunk his legacy as President. Something had to be done, and quickly.
Enter General Russell Honore. On August 31st, 2005, Bush named Honore as the commander of the Joint Katrina task force, and saved his presidency. Honore snapped in, and with a vengeance. And with a penchant for planning and logistics, he reorganized the task force on the fly. He also became almost a nightly fixture on the news, giving frequent press conferences on what had been done, what they were doing, and what was to be done next. And most importantly, Honore got results. Just as importantly, his every word and action exuded confidence and capability, which was exactly what people were craving.
Lt General Honore is tailor made for this crisis, mainly because he’s already done it before! To solve this dilemma, Honore is going to need to coordinate with FEMA, DHS, HHS, multiple state governors, along with multiple state national guards. In other words, all the same shit he did the last time. With Biden, as with Bush before him, Honore has a President who will give him all the support and tools he needs to succeed, get out of his way, and let him do the job. And just as in post Katrina, the country will come to depend on the calm, competent briefings telling them how things are going, and what comes next.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. The same constitutional guardrails and political courage that saved us from the excesses of Spiro Agnew held up too Donald Trump too. And today, we have the eerily similar circumstances of another natural disaster 15 years after show us the way this time. And best of all, we have the same man available to lead us through to the promised land again. Make the call, President Biden. Please.
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The Army Corps has already saved lives in CA, by getting oxygen to people who need it – the *hospitals* were running out of it!
Nice analysis of this issue Murf. Actually saw Lt General Honore on MSNBC some weeks back now, can’t recall which show, but it didn’t appear he would be reticent about taking this one on for his country. He’s blunt and almost said what was going on was a cluster Eff………..