Coronavirus: What this crisis reveals about US - and its president
The political geography of America, with its red and blue state separatism, has even affected how voters are being physically exposed to the virus. Democrats tend to congregate in the cities, whose dense populations have made them hotspots. Republicans tend to live in more sparsely populated rural areas, which so far have not been so badly hit. Thus, the polarisation continues amidst the pandemic.
However, the first two attempts to pass a stimulus package failed amidst the usual partisan acrimony and brinksmanship. Republicans and Democrat are arguing over whether to include expansions of paid leave and unemployment benefits, and what the Democrats are calling a slush fund for corporate America that could be open to abuse. Once again, Capitol Hill's dysfunction has been shown to be both systemic and endemic.
The paradox here, as lawmakers face-off, is that crises erase philosophical lines. As in 2008, ideological conservatives have overnight become operational liberals. Those who ordinarily detest government have come in this emergency to depend on it. Corporate America, which is generally phobic towards federal intervention, is now desperate for government bailouts.
As with the attacks of 11 September, warnings within government were repeatedly ignored. In recent years, there have been numerous exercises to test the country's preparedness for a pandemic - one of which involved a respiratory virus originating from China - that identified exactly the areas of vulnerability now being exposed. As with Hurricane Katrina, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has struggled, As ever, there are tensions between federal agencies and the states.
Politically, there will be so many ramifications. It is worth remembering, for example, that the Tea Party was as much a reaction to what was called the"big government conservatism" of George W Bush in response to the financial crisis as it was to the pigmentation of Barack Obama. The official history of the Tea Party movement states it came into existence on 3 October, 2008, when Bush signed into law TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Programme which saved the failing banks.
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