"Don't Fear Heroin, Drunk Drivers Or Drowning."

President Pandemic is not immune, cured, or anything like that. He is still infected and highly infectious. His friends, family, and most Americans hope he will recover.

Only about 3,500 Americans drown every year. But, I would not allow him to take my Grandchild on a boat ride not wearing a lifevest.

When our leader takes unacceptable risks with the health and lives of others for purely political reasons, he can and should be criticized by people of conscience.

What unacceptable risks? Look at your life. Sure, we all wear masks to the store. But, everyone comes in contact with someone without a mask. The protections around the President were extraordinary. He was tested daily, his staff was tested daily anyone meeting with him was required to be tested prior to meeting with him. His level of protection far exceeds anything we could ever achieve. Yet, even with all these steps, someone got it (seems like they point the finger to Hope Hicks.) Once she had it, she was in close quarters including inside the White House and on air force one. She was tested daily, but must have just crossed over to sickness where she tested negative but started to spread. This is how the virus spreads even with extreme caution. I don't see how you blame the President for following all the advice of the experts to protect himself. There have been 35 million covid cases now... it spreads. I imagine almost none of those 35 million had the protections around them that the President had. There is one and only one reason to place the blame on the President... Politics.

If President Pandemic, based on the knowledge of this disease that he confessed to Bob Woodward, but denied publicly, had addressed it as a real conservative leader would have, he would be facing an election landslide from a side opposite of where he sits today. He made it political. That was his undoing. He just has no concept of unity. He could not simply address the problem and lead all of America. Had he done so, history shows that America would have followed him. And, he would now be in the final lap of his greatest personal and professional triumph, instead of presiding over a national loss due to partisan division. I am not angry. I am disappointed. I don't hate him, or anyone else. I feel sorry for him and his loyal followers. I am not deterred. I am hopeful that the future will be brighter because we faced this test and came through it.

You notice how you made a big word salad, but never answered the question? If you're going to say he took "Unacceptable risks," you need to say what those were. (And, de didn't "Confess" to Woodward. It was an interview, he made those same comments publicly during other press interviews.)

He exposed others to his active and very contagious disease. If he made those same comments publicly, why were they not reported until Woodward played his tapes a couple of months ago

He killed 200,000 people this week during the brief time between his daily tests and the daily testing of people all around him. That is the craziest thing you have said yet. And, it was all reported publicly endlessly. What did we all know publicly late last year from China? If you get Covid, its a killer. In fact, I'd say we've only continued to learn it is LESS deadly then we initially thought. The citizen BEFORE Woodward was that Turmp was too optimistic, which was taken as minimization. Before the Woodward book Trump said publicly that he wasn't minimizing, he was being a 'cheerleader for America.' All along Trump has acknowledged people will die, but we need to stay positive and optimistic. He took every policy step recommended to him by the experts and the scientists including shutting down the entire country into a shelter in place. I don't think a step that dramatic has been taken by any president in our history. Gas prices plunged because literally no one was driving. All of this way before Woodward put his book out. I can't think of one single thing we learned from that book. It's only news because the radical left frames the interviews with Woodward as "caught on tape recordings." They aren't. He know he was being interviewed and he knew he was being records. He also new Woodward would write a negative book because he has done that to every President since Nixon. Most Presidents refuse interviews and Woodward writes the bombshell book anyway. Trump decided to go ahead and do the interviews because he is the most transparent President in our history. You get his stream-of-conciseness thinking on Twitter every day. Name on thing said in those tapes that we didn't already know?

Today, I said to a supporter of President Pandemic that a real conservative would have lead America through the COVID Pandemic successfully and their efforts would result in an American Triumph. These are not hollow words prompted by optimism or jingoism. They are the result of an assessment of the efforts of an American leader through trying times. Because of the tragedy of the Great Depression, too many Americans are not aware of the truly amazing story of Herbert Hoover.
(I have edited the rest of this essay to fit this space).

Hoover was a conservative when the word meant something, in American politics. He was guided by his Quaker beliefs in the prominence of the individual and the importance of both freedom and service. He was also an engineer and understood science and organization.

(My essay recalled Hoover's successful efforts to extricate 120,000 Americans stranded in Europe at the outset of WWI. He also convinced the Germans to allow a group he headed up, to feed the starving people of Belgium. He headed up a similar effort after WWII. When America-Firsters said he was feeding the people who were recently shooting at us, he famously said "No one is the enemy of children." The essay ended with):

He encouraged "Meatless Mondays," and "Wheatless Wednesdays so that there was enough food available for the humanitarian effort through the war years. Americans responded enthusiastically. We relish opportunities to do good deeds.

Herbert Hoover would have led us through the challenges presented by COVID in an organized, collegial manner that stressed compassion and cooperation. He would give conservatives and Christians ample reason to be proud of their efforts. He would have set the standard for addressing such problems. America would be admired by the world as a result.--That is how this "radical leftist" sees it.

I'm just not following your 'lead us through' logic. I'm looking for concrete policy errors. Can I ask if you work as an artist, musician, creative writer or something similar? I'm an Engineer, so point softly and saying mistakes were made but not being able to say what the mistakes are just doesn't work for me.

I am retired. I worked in Health Care Administration, Management, and Public Affairs for the VA, for about 30-years. A little less than half that time was spent in their Western Regional Office of Public Affairs. I was the Director of that office for a number of years. Organizationally, we were attached to the Office of the Secretary, a member of the President's Cabinet. I worked for and with four Republican heads of the Department, their deputies and support staff of political appointees.

Please note, Herbert Hoover was also an engineer. His policies and actions were driven by the logic he learned in his training for that vocation. He was not always successful, as history will show. But, you could always find a thread of logic in how he approached his various tasks. Which brings me to you. I have tired of the constant argumentative nature of our conversations. You have called me names and labeled me, as I have attempted to provide information concerning my view of our failed president. I am not the issue. I am a patient person. But, I have had enough. Find someone else to harass. I will no longer seek to have meaningful exchanges with you. I wish you well.

I've tried to attack what I see as flawed logic, not you as an individual. My question about your profession was a sincere effort to understand your view. If a plane crashed and the engineers asked why it crashed and someone said... the pilot failed to unite the crew. I'd say, no really... why did it crash? Electric problem? Out of gas? Impact? Now that you say you worked in public affairs, it explains your answer. 'Lack of leadership' is a PR kinda answer. Not a criticism, just a different view point. No hard feelings, I wish you well also.

"Lack of leadership," is an objective observation of what happened. I assembled all of the available facts, including the observations of national and international experts in the area of management of infectious diseases. I have eliminated all possible other explanations, including mass mental illness among the experts, and the last explanation standing was lack of leadership.

In modern medicine, the preferred approach to managing outbreaks is "Asepsis." What you do is isolate the infection and stop it from spreading. For example, wear masks and social distance, while quarantining the infected parties. The approach taken by this president from the beginning was to oppose asepsis. That is not logical, if your goal is to help prevent disease and protect the people. His approach has been denial and blame.

If you objectively examine the outcomes versus what was expected, the answer is problematic for your position. The world experts in infectious disease management reported this Fall, that the only thing not considered when they projected America's response to a pandemic was "Trump." They had predicted for years that we would have the best possible outcome based on physical and human resources. Our actual performance has been poor.

You claim to have made a sincere effort to understand. That does not match what you have done. You appear to be trying to make facts comport with a narrative in which what we see and hear are not to be believed. Facts and fantasy are most often incompatible. You don't have to be an expert on the Cartesian explanation of the failure of "dualism." You seem to have concluded, "I think Trump is right, therefore he is." The real facts, as recorded in real-time, do not support that conclusion. Only the revisionist versions in which the president says publicly, what he did not say, support your premise.

As the saying goes, the bigger fool is the fool who argues with a fool. I am that fool, today.

You're not a fool, we just disagree. I actually wrote a long response, but it deleted itself as I tried to submitted it. Maybe that is God's way of stepping in :). Thanks for the debate. Have a good evening.