‘The stuff of miracles’: Unlike Trump, earlier presidents found ways to solve major crises

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/07/01/trump-fails-covid-crisis-clinton-bush-truman-met-challenges-column/3278999001/

In the spring of 2003, while the march to war in Iraq was a preoccupation in Washington, President George W. Bush was occasionally hearing from members of his health policy and national security staffs that Africa was on the verge of a ghastly explosion in the number of HIV cases. Because a diagnosis of AIDS was considered a death sentence in the developing world, infected individuals were not seeking help and consequently were infecting others with the disease. Millions of African lives were at risk, with an unknown domino effect beyond.

ush quietly set up a secret group of professionals to deal with the problem, and personally issued this instruction: Go big. Relying heavily on Dr. Anthony Fauci at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and his colleague Mark Dybul (an openly gay HIV specialist who came into the president’s inner circle initially hating Bush and expecting him to sabotage the process), Bush devised an extraordinary initiative to get antiretroviral drugs into the furthest reaches of Africa at American taxpayer expense. PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief) was enacted by Congress over the opposition of a host of social and economic conservatives within the president’s own party, because Bush and his political adviser Karl Rove muscled it through.

‘The stuff of miracles’: Unlike Trump, earlier presidents found ways to solve major crises