I’ll have to treat this far more at length in a future post, but one thing that has been rattling around my noggin is what to make of the political responses to the pandemic. In my opinion, most states’ responses have been very mediocre, to be charitable. Admittedly, if we’re grading on a curve that includes Donald Trump and Governors Kristi Noem (SD) and Ron DeSantis (FL)–not to mention Gov. Cuomo (NY)–then many governors look better. But most states’ responses have been pretty bad, though the Trump administration exacerbated, well, everything.

This has been the greatest domestic policy failure in my lifetime–and, sadly, I’m not young. In light of this failure, most states’ governors and other powerful state-level politicians, regardless of party, perhaps should not be reelected, even those that are solid on other issues.

I don’t have any answers to this conundrum, but rewarding, or even excusing failure of this magnitude, doesn’t seem like a good thing to do.