Coronavirus may just trump Trump

US presidential polls are not only colourful – brimming with soundbites trotted out by candidates campaigning to preside over the world’s biggest economy – but also fiercely contested and issues ruthlessly exploited without any sensitivities.

It sees presidential hopefuls stopping at nothing to outdo each other, all on a crusade to win the soul of the American voter.

Forty years ago, I remember following with keen interest how Republican Ronald Reagan resoundingly unseated then incumbent president Jimmy Carter in a campaign largely boosted by voters’ perception of how Carter failed to bring back 52 Americans held hostage for 444 days in Iran.

Courtesy of the US Information Service weekly broadcast in Port Elizabeth, CBS News television veteran anchors Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather would bring us insightful analysis of the hostage drama during the Carter-Reagan elections campaigning.

Carter’s diplomacy – driven by concerns for any loss of life – not only led to protracted negotiations with the Iranian government, but his mounted Operation Eagle Claw military rescue mission backfired when it ended in American deaths and ruined military planes, with the hostages only being freed a day after Reagan’s inauguration.

Decades after the Carter-Reagan tussle for the White House the US is, in November, going to the presidential polls, amid a world gripped by the Covid-19 crisis which has, according to Worldometer this week, led to over a million Americans testing positive and over 83,000 deaths.

While findings of US public surveys in the run-up to this year’s elections have listed gun policy, terrorism, education and healthcare as topping the list of important issues, President Donald Trump’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic will determine whether he is the right man to lead America in years to come.

If strong views attributed to former US president Barack Obama are anything to go by, the upcoming elections could spell an end in office for the American strongman. Obama has described Trump’s Covid-19 handling as “chaotic”.

Resembling a capitalist without a soul, Trump has opted to push for the reopening of the US economy, downplayed recommendations by Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on the handling of the virus and made a mockery of the importance of wearing face masks.

Instead of working with the World Health Organisation (WHO) in fighting the pandemic, Trump and his lieutenant, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, are looking for a scapegoat.

Blaming China for failing to stop the Covid-19 spread is a theory not shared by WHO.

Trump, who has seen the pandemic as being worse than Pearl Harbour and the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre, has threatened more economic retaliation against China – a trade war.

Presenting a sobering view on the coronavirus crisis, Chinese embassy in SA charge d’affaires Lin Nan, this week told the Africa Shanghai General Chamber of Commerce to donate food parcels to needy South Africans: “This virus knows no borders and no race.”

The virus is too big to be politicised for narrow gains in US elections and no amount of blame will take the world forward in a campaign to stamp out the pandemic’s global spread.

Brian Sokutu.

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