Jim Geraghty of National Review Online questions media outlets’ choices of governors to promote during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Pretend for a moment that you are a journalist with a strong leaning in favor of progressivism and the Democratic Party, and you wish to make the argument that Democratic governors are doing a great job of mitigating the spread of the coronavirus.
If you use the measuring stick of fewest cases per million residents, Hawaii ranks first, as of this writing. Then Montana and Alaska, and Vermont ranks fourth. …
… My guess is that unless you live in or near one of those states, you’ve heard little about these governors, compared with what you’ve heard about New York’s Andrew Cuomo, Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer, California’s Gavin Newsom, and New Jersey’s Phil Murphy. …
… The personality, the pugnaciousness, the presence, the poll numbers . . . these governors have assembled all of the ingredients for a classic success story — except for the actual record of success.
By all kinds of measures, these most extensively covered and praised Democratic governors have done a job that is “meh” at best and pretty darn bad at worst. The decisions of Cuomo, Whitmer, Newsom, and Murphy regarding the movement of infected patients from hospitals to nursing homes and other long-term care facilities might be the worst and most consequential of the crisis. Whitmer made odd and difficult-to-justify decisions, including banning the purchase of seeds, and her husband apparently “jokes” about being exempt from state orders. California’s coronavirus-testing programs stumbled right out of the gate. Murphy violated his own order on large gatherings. Very little of this has affected the job-approval ratings of these governors — in part because only some portions of the media world are interested in the flaws of the records of these governors. The others prefer to stick to their preselected happy narrative.
