“When presidents fail, they do so on a grand scale.”
That quote comes from Why President Fail and How They Can Succeed Again, a book by Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government who worked in the White House under President Bill Clinton. The book was published in 2016, and in the shock of Donald Trump’s election to the presidency, I gave it a read. As it documented the way much more prepared presidents had floundered when they needed to shine, the book terrified me about the prospects for a President Trump.
And now, as the outlines of the administration’s disastrous response to the coronavirus pandemic come into view, the book feels like an unheeded warning. I spoke with Kamarck to discuss her reaction to the unfolding events, and her assessment was grim. Continue reading.