Character is revealed in a disaster — and People have discovered quite a bit about our leaders throughout the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.

With President Donald Trump totally failing management exams throughout a disaster that has claimed the lives of greater than 76,000 folks in america, it has fallen to the nation’s governors to fill the void. In Ohio, Republican Mike DeWine took early and decisive motion to sluggish the unfold of the novel coronavirus. Democrat Andrew Cuomo of New York, generally dinged as robotic and susceptible to micromanaging previous to this disaster, has received over critics along with his forthright each day briefings and declarations of accountability for the Empire State’s response.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, alternatively?

Our governor has been dithering behind the scenes and taking part in to his political base in public.

This week these tendencies on Abbott’s half had been introduced painfully to gentle. The Republican governor was in all places, each actually and metaphorically, as the results of a seeming publicity stunt staged by Dallas salon proprietor Shelley Luther.

Luther’s enterprise was amongst these shuttered quickly by Abbott’s stay-at-home order final month. However she determined to reopen on April 24 regardless, and he or she did so with a transparent sense of political goal. After receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Dallas County, she tore it up at an “Open Texas” rally held in Frisco the next day.

“Come and get it, Decide Clay Jenkins,” Luther stated in reference to the county choose, throwing the scraps of paper into the gang.

Hauled into courtroom Tuesday, Luther was defiant.

“For those who suppose the regulation is extra vital than children getting fed, then please go forward along with your determination, however I’m not going to close the salon,” she instructed state district Decide Eric Moyé, who had supplied her an opportunity to easily apologize. Moyé fined Luther $7,000 and sentenced her to seven days in jail for contempt of courtroom.

The standard suspects — Texas Legal professional Gen. Ken Paxton and Lieutenant Gov. Dan Patrick — leapt to her protection.

However so too did Abbott, which was puzzling. The governor had appeared like a voice of cause, comparatively talking, throughout the course of the pandemic.

And the order Luther so publicly flouted was Abbott’s, in spite of everything. However in an announcement Wednesday, Abbott instructed that the stay-at-home order was extra of a suggestion, whenever you get proper all the way down to it.

“Compliance with government orders throughout this pandemic is vital to make sure public security; nevertheless, absolutely there are much less restrictive means to reaching that aim than jailing a Texas mom,” he stated.

The governor dialed up his rhetoric over the subsequent few days.

“Nobody ought to forfeit their liberty and be despatched to jail for not sporting a masks,” he harrumphed on Wednesday, throughout an look on Sean Hannity’s Fox Information program.

And on Thursday Abbott revised his personal order to take away the specter of jail time related to violations of it.

“We shouldn’t be taking these folks and put them behind bars,” he stated throughout an look alongside Trump on the White Home.

The governor reiterated that time on Twitter: “Throwing Texans in jail whose biz’s shut down by no fault of their very own is flawed.”

After attempting to place a long way between himself and the native officers whose judgment he had praised simply weeks in the past, Abbott then resumed his assaults on native officers in Harris County and elsewhere for searching for to launch some non-violent offenders from the county jail, the place a whole bunch of inmates have examined constructive and two contaminated inmates have died.

“Criminals shouldn’t be launched to stop COVID-19 simply to place enterprise homeowners of their place,” the governor added.

Abbott has been roundly criticized for this flip-flopping. Houston Police Chief Artwork Acevedo, for instance, denounced his actions as “hypocritical.”

“You shouldn’t situation orders that embody the jailing of violators to cowl the science, simply to turnaround & excoriate those that implement YOUR government order to cowl the political backlash,” Acevedo tweeted Friday.

Most troubling, nevertheless, is that at no level throughout this previous week’s saga has there been any cause to suppose that the governor’s actions had been knowledgeable by knowledge moderately than politics.

“We now have demonstrated that we are able to corral the coronavirus,” Abbott stated final month, in asserting his plans to reopen the state economic system in phases. It might be good to be assured of that. However we nonetheless don’t know the extent of the virus’ unfold in Texas. The state continues to lag when it comes to testing per capita, averaging 16,300 exams per day final week — nicely in need of the governor’s aim, of 30,000 a day.

Moroever, Abbott has acknowledged, in public, that his plan to re-open the state might result in a rise in transmission of the virus. And in a name with lawmakers, the audio of which was leaked to Quorum Report, he acknowledged that it’s going to. “It’s virtually ipso facto,” Abbott stated.

We could, as a state, be in a great place to deal with an uptick in COVID-19 circumstances. Our hospitals aren’t near full capability, fortunately, as they’re in hard-hit states reminiscent of New York. However it’s disturbing to see the governor’s plan for navigating this pandemic be revised, on the fly, in response to publicity stunts and social-media backlash.

I spoke with Don Kettl, the Sid Richardson professor on the LBJ College of Public Affairs at UT Austin, about what constitutes efficient management in a disaster.

“The governor’s taken a really cautious, and really, I believe, a really skillful highway by these very troublesome waters,” Kettle noticed.

However Kettl burdened the residents are searching for straight speak, not pleased speak.

“I’ve talked to quite a bit with individuals who have managed disasters,” Kettl stated. “The proof, what they are saying constantly, is you have to shoot straight. Any effort to attempt to finesse something is one thing that can eventually catch you up.”

Abbott ought to fear much less about placating grass-roots conservatives, a few of whom are displeased on the pace with which he’s reopening the state, and extra about steering Texas by a public well being disaster that has up to now killed greater than 1,000 of its residents.

Texas has begun a phased reopening despite the fact that it’s amongst many states which have failed to satisfy The White Home’s standards of a “downward trajectory” of documented circumstances or share of constructive exams over a 14-day interval. That ought to fear Texans.

Abbott assured Trump that the state is “going in regards to the means of slowly opening again up, doing the best methods to verify we are able to open up whereas on the similar time cut back the unfold.”

Let’s hope so. Lives are at stake. Folks need to return to work, and all of us need to exit to dinner or get a haircut sooner or later, however we are also relying on the governor to offer us correct public well being info and do every part in his energy to maintain us protected.

“Authorities is just not speculated to make coverage by political strain,” Cuomo remarked this week. That’s proper, and it’s a great reminder for Abbott.