Patient No. 7,497,257 checks in
It’s probably not the October surprise Republicans had been promising…
Donald Trump has now contracted the coronavirus, as has First Lady, Melania Trump, and possibly a few others in his immediate circle. To say this is monumental news is, for once, a monumental understatement. The news deserves appellations derived from the Greek. This is hubris writ larger than the name “Trump” has ever been erected on the side of a casino hotel.
So far, Vice President Mike Pence has tested negative for the virus, but America’s government must still prepare for the possibility – remote but much less remote than it was 24 hours ago – that the third-in-line to the presidency could be called upon within the normal period of this virus incubating and developing into life-threatening symptoms. Realistically, within three weeks, Nancy Pelosi could be the acting President of the United States.
Despite the U.S. now approaching 7.5 million cases of COVID-19, Donald Trump’s name among those contracting the disease had been noticeably absent. Now he’s caught it, there has naturally been some barely contained glee from that small minority within any majority who refuse to acknowledge that anybody contracting this awful disease deserves some sympathy. As a 74-year old man with some obvious co-morbidities (and possibly more that have remained locked inside Water Reed Hospital), Trump sits on the wrong side of many of the statistics he’s been quoting for the best part of the year.
Make no mistake: the odds are still hugely in his favour. The chief danger of COVID-19 remains not its lethality but the speed with which an outbreak can overwhelm a health system. That said, the numbers are not as favourable as they could be. Doctors will monitor his health intensely and it’s to be hoped he experiences a milder form of the disease.
Beyond the personal, however, there is also the political. The world markets fell at the news, though surely not as much as they would have if this hadn’t been so foreshadowed. The President had been repeatedly warned by epidemiologists – many in his own COVID-19 response team – that he and his staff weren’t giving the coronavirus the respect it was due. Much has been talked about the White House’s use of the rapid Abbot Test. Since earlier in the year, experts had warned the tests could be missing up to 50% of infections.
Similarly, the distinct lack of masks at debates might not have posed a great threat to Trump who kept his distance from the crowd, but it spoke to the wilful negligence of advice provided by his own Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), regarding this virus’s tendency to be transmitted asymptomatically. In the end, it looks like the vector into the Oval Office was, indeed, via asymptomatic spread, through Trump former assistant and now Counselor to the President, Hope Hicks (who later developed symptoms).
To put this in the most pragmatic – if crude – political terms, there’s little here that helps Trump beyond the fact that the presidential debates are now probably over. The remaining two were due to take place on the 15th and the 22nd of October and, based on the first, it’s hard to see how the President could have turned things around. Before the latest news, Trump was already hinting that any rule changes announced by The Commission on Presidential Debates, designed to stop his constant interruptions, would preclude him from attending. He now has an even better excuse.
That does not mean, however, that we’re unlikely to hear from the President in the coming days. We might, rather, see a reversal of the situation from a few weeks ago, when Trump criticised Joe Biden from campaigning from his basement. Assuming that Biden hasn’t contracted it from Trump during Tuesday’s debate, Biden should continue to campaign to his small audiences, masked and socially distanced.
Symptoms willing, Trump will probably continue tweeting and be the media hog he’s been for the past three and a half years. “Fox & Friends” and “Hannity” are in for a long two or three weeks of phone calls from Patient 7,497,257’s sickbed. Then there’s also the small matter of his SCOTUS choice to push through and it’s not yet clear if Trump hasn’t himself become a superspreader to members of the Senate and even Amy Coney Barrett, herself.
More broadly, the American public will offer sympathy to the President – none but the most partisan and heartless will wish him anything but a speedy recovery – but it’s unlikely that this development radically changes the outcome in November. Rather, don’t be surprised if the President doesn’t use the situation to change the narrative, putting his bad debate performance (he looked notably sweaty) down to the infection, or perhaps by demanding a delay in the vote, but then Trump has never fully understood how the Constitution works. He has already threatened to litigate November’s result in order so he can remain as President, not seeming to understand that nothing can stop him leaving office on 20th January 2021 other than an election win.
This does raise some interesting Constitutional questions. The date of the election itself can’t easily be changed since it’s established in US Code § 7 which stipulates that “The Tuesday next after the 1st Monday in November […] is established as the day for the election”. Deeper still into the weeds, it’s the Constitution itself (the Twentieth Amendment) that states that Trump’s term will end — no ifs, buts, or maybes — on 20th January. Needless to say, changes to the Constitution require agreement of the States and are so unlikely to be practically impossible. Beyond this, however, there is some degree of latitude where we would find more pragmatic solutions.
The 25th Amendment allows Trump to hand power to Pence during any time he’s ill (and to reclaim it back once he’s recovered). Should a nominee die between now and the election, the matter would be thrown into the maelstrom of party politics but can assume a candidate would emerge (most likely the other name on the ticket). The real grey period is when a candidate dies so close to election day that there isn’t time to nominate a replacement. At such a point, it’s unclear as to where members of the Electoral College would put their vote come December. As we’ve discovered through so much of Trump’s presidency, many of the mechanisms of the U.S. system just haven’t been stress tested that far.
In truth, those mechanisms are unlikely to be tested this time. Much more likely, at the moment, is that the polls favouring Biden will continue to favour him. Pollsters were already predicting a slight uptick in support for the Democrat after the first debate but any sympathy towards Trump will now be hard to untangle from Tuesday’s poor performance. In scoring that, it’s also hard to see how “Sickbed Trump” doesn’t now become a synecdoche for his grander failure. Ultimately, Trump’s predicament is a warning about the hubris of power.
Science has been wrongly blamed for many of the overreactions (and a few underreactions) by governments around the world, but it’s to be remembered that science never made any policy. Science explains and predicts. It analyses and it models. It explores and experiments. It informs but it does not dictate. That’s the work of politicians and, in the case of Trump, the work of a man who seemed to believe that the sheer force of his personality and his desire to remain in office could prove medical science wrong. He is now beginning to understand that Executive Power provides far less immunity than it afforded him legal protection.