Feehery: Will 2024 be the year of our COVID-19 reckoning?

In March of 1968, facing a tough primary challenge from Robert Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson decided not to run for reelection. The increasingly unpopular Vietnam War had split the Democratic Party and made Johnson’s bid untenable. Richard Nixon won the election on the promise that he had a secret plan to end the war in Southeast Asia. 

In 2008, Democrats nominated first-term Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois to be their standard-bearer. Obama had relatively little experience but he had one thing going for him that his chief opponent did not have: He was unabashedly opposed to the Iraq War. Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) was for it before she was against it — she voted to authorize the war, but would years later say her vote was a mistake. Obama had no problem dispatching the Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), who tried to run as a maverick but had the war tied around his shoulders like an anvil. 

In many ways, America’s entry into the war on COVID-19 was like both Vietnam and Iraq. All three wars were launched under false pretenses. All put an especially difficult burden on the youth of America. All three had sophisticated propaganda campaigns. All three cost the American people in blood and treasure. The first two shook the faith that voters had in the political establishment. It remains to be seen if COVID will have a similar widespread impact.   

If you spend as much time on Twitter as I do — I don’t recommend it — you would think that the failed battle against the coronavirus would be a topic of top concern. I follow such luminaries as author Alex Berenson, professor and physician Jay Bhattacharya, civil liberties attorney Jenin Younes, author Naomi Wolf and professor Martin Kulldorff, and from their perspective, the authoritarian lockdowns were not only an unprecedented assault on our civil liberties, they were catastrophically bad for the health of the nation, especially young people.  

But sometimes I wonder whether the concerns of these experts and intellectuals are contained to only a small echo chamber of folks who found the lockdowns, the vaccine and mask mandates to be unconscionable. Indeed, it is my secret suspicion that most Americans, many of whom cheered on the lockdowns and happily complied with the mandates, would rather that the discussion move on to different subjects. Perhaps they are privately ashamed of their complicity, or maybe they think that public health authorities did the best that they could. More than a few Donald Trump supporters think the president handled things well, especially with Operation Warp Speed. From these voters’ perspective, once enough folks got jabbed, they would get their freedom back, damn any possible long-term consequences.   

We are going to find out, quickly, if the failed war on COVID is as unpopular as Vietnam and Iraq, because both political parties have candidates on both sides of the question. Like LBJ, President Biden is facing an insurgent named Robert Kennedy. The press treats the younger Kennedy like a gadfly, yet he is already polling at close to 20 percent. What’s more, he may win New Hampshire because Biden won’t be able to compete there due to new rules under the Democratic National Committee. Kennedy has hammered away at corporate greed and our broken health care system for decades, but his ideas — especially in the context of COVID — are gaining currency among anti-establishmentarians in both political parties.   

The race between Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has taken a curious turn. Sensing his own vulnerability on this issue, Trump has taken to lying spectacularly about DeSantis’s role in the COVID lockdowns, making claims that defy logic and reason. Trump has called DeSantis a lockdowner who didn’t protect his people from COVID, despite the fact the Florida governor was among the first to aggressively reopen his state (and despite Trump’s criticism at the time). Florida’s COVID numbers ended up being much better than lockdown states like California. 

It took a while for anti-war sentiment to catch fire during the Vietnam and Iraq engagements, but when it did, it became an unstoppable force. Will the same happen with our failed COVID response? We are about to find out and find out fast. 

Feehery is a partner at EFB Advocacy and blogs at thefeeherytheory.com. He served as spokesman to former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), as communications director to former House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas) and as a speechwriter to former House Minority Leader Bob Michel (R-Ill.).