https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/andrew-sullivan-america-is-trapped-in-trumps-blind-spot.html

Trump’s failure to grasp the politics of coronavirus is, I’d argue, a microcosm of his entire administration. As with COVID-19, Trump had so many potential advantages at the beginning, after his surprise victory. Imagine if he’d started his presidency with a massive infrastructure spending bill, followed by an immigration compromise that would have funded his wall, beefed up enforcement, but also gave security to the Dreamers. Imagine if his tax bill had been geared to help working families, rather than the superrich, or that he promised to change Obamacare by expanding it. He would have had a chance to be a transformative president.

But to do that, he would have had to have been someone other than himself. He would have to have developed a long-term political strategy, thought structurally about the country first, and seen his base as a building block to reach out to others in building a durable coalition. But as so many of us pointed out, he was and is simply incapable of this. He’s a prisoner of his own psyche, there is nothing he can do to tame it, and he will allow no one to overrule it.