A Pressidential Guide To Crisis Management

What Trump should have learned from his predecessors

- By John Dickerson

Donald Trump should have seen the coronavirus pandemic coming. This is not a statement about epidemiology. It’s a statement about the presidency, a job of high-stakes surprises that are complex and overwhelming.

Over the past several years, I’ve talked with dozens of current and former members of the executive branch in order to understand the demands of the modern presidency. These interviews were conducted before the coronavirus appeared, but almost everyone I spoke with foresaw a crisis of this kind. Some, such as Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, were specific. A year before the virus hit, he told me that the threat of a pandemic as deadly as the 1918 flu kept him up at night. Others were more general. They knew disaster would strike, they just didn’t know what form it would take.

“It’s the unexpected that will catch them,” Condoleezza Rice said of new presidents. Every candidate promises, “On day one, I will,” she told me. But “the world doesn’t accord with the world that they thought they were going to be able to shape.”

Rice has seen her share of black swans. She was serving as national security adviser when the 9/11 attacks happened. In the presidential campaign the year before, the topic of terrorism had barely come up. At the three debates between George W. Bush and Al Gore, the word was spoken only once, in passing.