Even granting considerable leeway for the unprecedented nature of the coronavirus and the speed with which it spread, governments responded quite poorly. This is no surprise, since it’s not like many Americans had much confidence in government in 2019 or the many years before that. But with governments having a monopoly on the exercise of political and police power, it was on government that Americans and people around the world had to rely on and pressure to make the right decisions.
Here in California, we saw Gov. Gavin Newsom hand out big-dollar, no-bid contracts to companies that previously donated to his political campaigns. We saw him tout the need for vaccine mandates, but also challenge such mandates when it came to the prison guards union that has poured millions of dollars into his political career. Now he’s dreaming of the presidency.
We saw the state of California give away tens of billions of dollars to fraudsters through a long-mismanaged unemployment system. Now, Julie Su, who oversaw the state of California’s labor department and unemployment system, is in President Joe Biden’s cabinet making national decisions.
We saw teachers unions pressure school districts to keep schools shut as they sought to leverage the pandemic to their benefit. After the damage to school children was done, we heard brilliant takeaways from the union bosses: “It’s OK that our babies may not have learned all their times tables,” said LAUSD teacher union President Cecily Myart-Cruz. “They learned resilience.”
We saw hypocrisy on full display throughout the pandemic. Yes, there was Newsom’s infamous French Laundry outing. But there was also that time Los Angeles County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl voted to ban outdoor dining, calling it “dangerous,” and then was spotted hours later at her favorite restaurant. There were plenty of other examples, from Nancy Pelosi visiting a hair salon to Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti happily violating a mask mandate imposed on Angelenos.
None of this was surprising when it was happening. When you have poor quality leaders and institutions, you get poor results. Then, as now, we need better leaders and stronger institutions