JUDY WOODRUFF: And now it is time for the
analysis of Shields and Brooks. That's syndicated
columnist Mark Shields and New York Times
columnist David Brooks.
Hello to both of you.
Let's -- here we are, what is it, three weeks,
Mark, since the first stay-at-home order.
The United States is now -- by the count we
see, has almost one-third the cases of coronavirus
of the entire world total.
How is the U.S. doing in this fight?
MARK SHIELDS: I think the U.S. is adjusting
collectively to a new reality, a terrible
reality.
As Heraclitus said several thousand years,
character is destiny. We're seeing character.
We're seeing leadership. We're seeing society's
heroes change, from investment bankers and
leveraged buyout artists, to all of a sudden
people stop and applaud hospital workers and
nurses and doctors and firefighters and emergency
people.
That is a change. It's a recognition of the
importance of what people -- it's a recognition
of what grocery store workers do to keep our
country going. The sacrifices that so many
people are making are truly breathtaking and
admirable.
And I think that's -- that, to me, has been
the signal characteristic.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And, David, how would you say
the country is doing, both at the federal
level and at the state level?
DAVID BROOKS: I would say we're hanging in
there.
You don't get a sense of great competence
and expertise at the federal level. You do
get a little more of that at the state level.
The deaths are mounting. The economy is really
crashing down around us.
I am focused on mental health these days.
I asked 6,000 of my New York Times readers
to write to me about how their mental health
is doing. And I was gutted by their responses.
People are really hurting.
There are three groups in particular, young
people just feeling their hopes and dreams
are dashed. And there's a sense of hopelessness,
not eating, not sleeping, crying on the sofa.
Senior citizens also very badly hit, especially
widows and widowers, just that sense of just
crushing isolation.
And then those with mental health problems,
those who already had mental health problems,
who are now seeing these relapses.
And so there's another curve, a mental health
curve. And yet I think America is still hanging
together. Faith in our institutions is pretty
good. There's nobody rioting in the streets.
There's nobody looting. There's nobody saying,
we have got to do anything but what we have
got to do, which is just hunker down.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And, Mark, do you see the scaffolding
in place, the infrastructure, whatever you
want to call it, the support systems in place
to help people at this moment?
MARK SHIELDS: No, Judy.
I think, ironically, it's Bernie Sanders'
moment after that interview. I mean, if anything
has laid bare the income inequality, the economic
inequality and disparity in this country,
beginning with health care, 10 million people,
I don't know how many million of them have
lost their health care in the last three weeks.
But what Bernie Sanders talked about is laid
bare before us right now.
I will say what David -- following up David's
point about a confidence growing, it is, but
it's growing in an interesting way, in governors,
in mayors, in local government, less so in
the federal government, less so in the president.
The president -- confidence in the president
is not. And I think it's fascinating that
governors who have daily television shows
have done very well. Mike DeWine in Ohio is
at 80 percent approval. Chris Sununu, a New
Hampshire Republican, is at 73 percent, with
61 percent of Democrats rating him favorably.
Donald Trump is not. Why? Very simply, because
his daily doses, his substitute for his rallies
are full of self-pity, full of invective,
full of putdowns of those around him, of complaints
that he's not getting the appreciation and
attention that he should get.
And contrast that with the governors, who
are providing empathy, direction, information,
encouragement, and facts. And I really think
there's a distinct difference, and people
see it.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And, David, what's your assessment
of the president? He is holding these daily
briefings, which sometimes run two, two-and-a-half-hours.
And now he is talking about announcing next
week what he's calling a get back to -- an
opening up commission, open the country up
council, if you will.
Is this what the country needs to hear at
this point?
DAVID BROOKS: I think it is, actually. We
need to know what phase two is. We know we're
going to hunker down for a while. We have
got to know what the world is going to look
like when we come out of this.
And there are no good plans out there. The
plans that are circulating -- there are a
lot of private plans -- they tend to focus
on massive amounts of testing, way more tests
than we have right now, and then tracing,
where you have an app on your phone, and somebody,
the government, I don't know who, Bill Gates,
could -- would track where you go, who you
came into contact with, and you -- if you
contacted somebody with the virus, then they
would like you know, and you would self-isolate.
That is -- that kind of pulling out of this
is incredibly daunting, but it's something
we're going to have to figure out as we slowly
emerge from this.
And so I'm glad the president's setting up
this committee. The problem is -- as I have
been told, is that everybody on that committee
has to be 100 percent loyal. And so if you
said anything nasty about Donald Trump, you
don't qualify for the committee.
And that basically guarantees a very low level
of competence from that committee. The North
Korean-style loyalty tests are going to be
crushing to the competence of any effort going
forward.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Interesting, because, when
the president was asked about it today, he
said he wasn't paying attention, Mark, to
anyone's political identification, whether
they belong to the Republican or the Democratic
Party.
MARK SHIELDS: And, Judy, at which point did
his nose start to grow.
I mean, this is all the president has done
since he was acquitted in the impeachment,
is to settle scores, to go after career professionals,
dedicated professional public servants, who
have given honest testimony. And because they
did so, they're fired, they're suspended,
they're ostracized, they are humiliated.
We have a loyalty administration at this point.
And that's one reason, Judy, why the next
deal with Congress, it becomes almost impossible.
Steve Mnuchin, the press (sic) secretary,
has worked very well with Nancy Pelosi, the
Democratic speaker, but he can't deliver Donald
Trump. I mean, his word doesn't mean anything.
Steve Mnuchin says -- but Donald Trump, as
soon as the ink was even dry on the last legislation,
he refused to honor the legislation and the
obligation of oversight that the Congress
has, when you are spending trillions of dollars.
So, I -- no, I really think that it's a -- we're
in a grave situation in terms of leadership.
JUDY WOODRUFF: One other thing I want to ask
you about that involving the president, David,
and that is his firing over the past week
of two inspectors general, one over the intelligence
community, the other one at the Pentagon overseeing
how this money is being spent to fight the
pandemic.
What do we learn from that?
DAVID BROOKS: Well, it's more North Korean
loyalty tests. It's a political vendetta,
straight and simple. And you got to be a total
loyalist.
I'm reminded that, in World War II, there
was the Truman Committee, led by Harry Truman,
which was the president's own party appoint
-- had this committee, which did everything
on a bipartisan consensus, to crack down on
profiteering and war profiteering, and phenomenally
successful.
And people in their own party were willing
to look at the administration, if they could
save some money, if they could save lives,
if they could fight the war more effectively.
And we apparently are not going to be able
to get that.
And so, when I look at the challenges facing
us, one of them is just social trust. We have
to have faith in our institutions, which means
there has to be oversight. And we have to
be -- have faith in each other.
With a lack of social trust, it's really hard
to get anything done. And you see that on
Capitol Hill right now, where the Senate and
the Republicans and Democrats can't figure
out what to put first, these small business
loans or the public health loans.
If we had a trusting institution, we'd say,
OK, we will do one, then we will do the other,
we're not going to have a big fight about
it. But we lack that elemental social trust.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Mark, a quick word about the
inspector general decision.
MARK SHIELDS: Judy, I mean, it's obvious.
It's part of the vendetta.
This is a -- this is a president who feels
totally aggrieved and totally liberated from
the post-impeachment. And I guess it shouldn't
-- doesn't come as a surprise probably to
those who were in favor of the impeachment
that this is what he's doing.
I mean, he's going after such trusted and
respected professionals, and accusing them
of petty partisanship, which is totally a
bogus charge and unfair, and not only labeling
their reputations, but, in many cases, ending
their careers.
JUDY WOODRUFF: I want to ask you both about
Bernie Sanders. We talked about that at the
beginning, and his ideas for Medicare for
all.
We heard him say, David, he's going to be
supporting Joe Biden, even though he knows
that Biden is not going to embrace this. And
this is Sanders' top priority.
How do you assess his decision to suspend?
DAVID BROOKS: Well, it was inevitable.
He had two problems. One, the party is a little
to the center of where he is, and, two, he
was never really good at working with other
people. And so he wasn't able to build a coalition.
I think the thing that's inspiring about Sanders,
whether you agree with him or not, here's
a guy who is fighting for a cause and has
fought for it for decades, five or six decades,
and he's never budged. He's been in the wilderness
for decades.
And his moment has arrived, to be honest.
And so he's created a movement. He's given
a new generation a voice. It's a very impressive
accomplishment, to just stick to it, stick
to it, stick to it.
And I imagine he's still in it for the long
game, whether he's president or not, that
some of his ideas will come to fruition with
a new generation.
JUDY WOODRUFF: How much influence, Mark, do
you think he's going to have on the Biden
campaign?
MARK SHIELDS: Well, I think he's already having
influence.
I mean, we see the senator, former Vice President,
former Senator Biden moving already on college
and $15-an-hour minimum wage.
I mean, Bernie Sanders dominated the dialogue
of the last five years of the Democratic Party.
And it was a signal achievement, what he achieved,
in bringing crowds of people, of raising money,
and from more people than any candidate, I
believe, in the history of the Democratic
Party, individual contributors. Just absolutely
remarkable.
And he set the terms of the debate.
I do agree that the fatal flaw were two things,
one within his control and the other outside.
His campaign was never one of welcoming people
who had differed with him in the past. There
was almost a litmus test. If you had been
wrong on NAFTA, Iran and Iraq, you were somehow
considered unacceptable by many of Bernie's
most ardent supporters, certainly.
And the second thing is, once the virus hit
and once our pandemic hit, he was frozen in
ice. I mean, all the things that a candidate
could do to show movement and support, whether
it was rallies or speeches or hand-to-hand
campaigning, was gone.
And I think he accepted that. I accept him
at his word. The toughest thing in the -- a
candidate, Judy, is not running and losing.
It's admitting that it's over.
And I think Joe Biden is showing great sensitivity
by giving him both praise and time to heal.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, we appreciate both of
you tonight.
Mark Shields, David Brooks, thank you. And
please stay safe, both of you.
MARK SHIELDS: Thank you.
