I never forgot this Churchill truism: Either you deliver or you don’t. While I spent a great deal of time working on my relationship with the people, I put as much energy into the management of government. It’s all about the details and achieving results, especially when it’s life or death, making the bureaucracy work. I understand why some state governments and the federal government ran from the challenge. It’s really hard.
APRIL 13 | 6,337 NEW CASES | 18,825 HOSPITALIZED | 671 DEATHS
“None of us has done this before.”
WE BELIEVED WE HAD HIT the peak. Today was the highest number of deaths we had, but the number of occupied ICU beds and the number of new hospitalizations were down from the day before. The number of deaths couldn’t keep growing if fewer people were entering hospitals.
Were we finally seeing a break? If so, the question would now become, how long would we be on the “plateau”? The plateau is where the number stabilizes but does not yet begin to drop. The follow-up question was, how steep is the drop? Meaning, how quickly would the number of new people entering the hospital system slow?
Trump was fully focused on “reopening” the country, although he had to give up on his Easter plan, because that had come and gone. It was clear he believed his reelection would hinge solely on the economy. While the economy is normally a sound predictor of an incumbent’s reelection, it is not definitive. And what’s ironic is that a strong response to the COVID crisis could have all but guaranteed Trump’s reelection. If Trump had any ability to understand the responsibility of government and the responsibility of leadership, he would have seized the moment. If he had led the country through COVID, he could have been one of the greatest national leaders in a generation. Trump just had to recognize the reality and lead. He had to see the situation through the eyes of the public rather than through his own narcissistic lens. But then that is the difference between Trump and a great leader. Asking him not to act in his self-interest is like asking a skunk not to smell.
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I WAS READING books about war. I wanted a distraction and to read about a time that was worse than the time we were in. But I was also curious about how military leaders could make decisions that they knew would cost lives—situations where even if you won the battle, you knew there could be hundreds of thousands of casualties. All great military leaders manage to do it. General Dwight Eisenhower was told days prior to the D-Day invasion of Normandy that as many as three quarters of his troops might be killed. There was no battle or victory to be had without the loss of life. They celebrated the victory and mourned the dead. But how could they rationalize that their decisions cost soldiers their lives? Was every victory really that important? What calculus did they apply?
I realized that my situation was so much easier than a military leader’s. I was doing everything I could to save every life possible, but still people would die and it would be on my watch. Maybe there was something else I could’ve done. Maybe there was a better drug to use. Maybe if more people would’ve worn a mask we could have avoided more infections. Maybe I should have had fewer essential workers report to work. The questions went on and on and on and on. During the day I was too busy to torture myself, but at night I would lie in bed and scroll through the reel of questions. I had discussed every decision before I made it with every expert I could find. There was no decision made in haste or without exhaustive conversation. But that didn’t mean every decision was right.
As a general rule, I am very conscious of asking for constructive criticism. I even ask for destructive criticism. People don’t like to deliver bad news. They especially don’t like to deliver bad news to people in power. You have to ask for it and invite it and make sure they know that you won’t shoot the messenger. I compliment people who give me the harshest criticism. People don’t like to deliver criticism, because people don’t like to hear it themselves. We run from our weaknesses and try to deny them, even to ourselves. But if we don’t acknowledge them, there will be no improvement.
There’s no doubt that the long-term relationship with my team provided grounding and a source of comfort. As did my family and my daughters. But for all the input and collegiality, the responsibility still lies with you, right or wrong. You make the final decision. For all the love you receive from family, they can’t shoulder the burden for you. With all the expert advice, no one else really sees the entire chessboard. As close as people are to you, they still can’t feel the pressure you feel.
When I would lie in bed at night replaying all the scenarios, I found an exercise that actually helped me. My father had written a book called Why Lincoln Matters: Today More Than Ever. It took Lincoln’s principles and applied them to current-day issues. I found the book more illustrative of my father than of Lincoln. My father believed that if you hold your principles dear, you can just apply them to different fact patterns. I knew my father better than anyone did, except maybe my mother, and I knew his principles better than anyone. So I would lie in bed and have a conversation with my father. It wasn’t a dream conversation; it was just an exercise. I would list a fact pattern and ask him what he thought. And then I would provide his analysis: He would break down the facts into the
