COVID Update August 20: You have been hearing Biden and Harris say he wont "do the work" to discuss Trump's failed pandemic response. They're being polite.

Here's what doing the work looks like and what it doesn't.

Let's take the example of how you open schools during a global pandemic.

Doing the work: Start working on planning in May.

Not doing the work: Tweet in July "Open schools."

Doing the work: Gathering the FDA, scientists, national labs and innovators with the single objective of creating an instant low cost quick test to be used for daily school entry by Aug 1.

Not: Disbanding the task force in May & abdicate all responsibility for testing.

Doing the work: Going to Congress and passing a budget to retrofit schools safely & provide the contact tracing, isolation & mental health resources schools need.

Not: Letting McConnell get away with not delivering any support, unchallenged.

Doing the work is something I like to call "what we pay you for."

Other ways of saying it are: "the bare minimum" or "doing your job."

There are some pretty good tells for if someone is doing the work.

When 10s of thousands of people are dead and you get a report that 10s of thousands of people may die soon, you don't say "it is what it is." You don't golf. You don't brag over how bad things could have been.

Instead you do the work. If that means masks, you manufacture, import & distribute them like life itself was in the balance. If it means closing bars, you make sure that happens. If it means moving people out of nursing homes, you orchestrate that.

You repeat this every day: Every. single. life. means. something.

You make your staff repeat it. You mourn every single loss. You get the names. You call families. You make it as uncomfortable as possible for everyone until it stops. That's part of doing the work.

Every preventable death you don't stop is a failure you tell every one. Our failure. Your failure.

Doing the work means you have the best people on the planet working on NOTHING BUT THIS. You don't have a team that's also working on the Middle East and your re-election & being PR shills.

A real president wouldn't outsource the running of a war. Wouldn't take three months off in a campaign.

President Obama famously said "all the easy decisions get made before they make it to my desk. Everything that comes to me will be tough decisions."

You embrace that or it terrifies you.

The biggest cowards end up frozen in place. They tell governors to figure it out. They remind you constantly that the virus didn't initiate here; therefore why be responsible for it. They let decisions drift. They change the topic. They only address it if the polls dictate.

The biggest cowards keep up a myth of invincibility. They require people to tell them they're doing as good a job as possible because there's no evidence. They attack others.

They don't do the work.

And so what happens? Time passes. Not productive time. not time when you are solving problems.

Whatever the private sector or scientists do, you claim credit for. Whatever they don't, you blame them.

If something fails, you blame it on the supposed experts.

Instead of doing the work you say "who could do a better job?" You complain that people don't understand you. You seek out evidence of your goodness. You find compliant people in the Congress who will soothe you. You golf with Lindsay Graham.

Instead of doing the work, if you are about to face judgment, you instinctually reach for anything that prevents that. You say "who can be expected to deliver the mail." You go all out to stop the vote. You find the easiest ways out possible.

Instead of doing the work, you get angry that your ego is taking hits. You fire people, you malign them publicly, you play favorites. You know you can always easily embarass them using Twitter.

Instead of doing the work, you rile your mob up on Twitter. You read their replies praising you. You watch sychophants on TV.

You distract yourself by associating with the con men who "get you", with grifters who know you deserve the spoils because you got elected after all.

You don't see you're not doing the work because this is how much work you've always done. This is what work feels like to you. Spinning. Bullying.

But not planning. Not deciding. Not saving lives. Because that would imply you had the power all along. That you failed.

The truth you can't face is that everything is collapsing around you while you are too immobilized to lift a finger. Its all collapsing. Loss of jobs, loss of life, loss of belief.

Your ego won't let you grasp the historical magnitude of your failure. It won't process it.

Only your skill at compartmentalizing, justifying, and blaming allows you not to see what everybody else sees. If you think they don't like you behind your back, you fire them.

If lunatics praise you, you praise them. Whoever likes you-- those are your people.

Being at the helm when things go badly wrong is part of the job. And in Germany, France, Greece, New Zealand, Japan, Taiwan, and Korea, the real leaders are not weaker. They emerge stronger.

But they do the hard & necessary, not the absent & frivolous.

There's a hiring opportunity now. And with it the thousands of people that would do the work. Or not. /end

Here is what doing the work looks like. It’s what @RonaldKlain did with Obama-Biden. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/in-the-bubble-with-andy-slavitt/id1504128553?i=1000473736638