Matt's comparison is apt: people thought Trump was just waiting for an emergency/crisis like this, and he completely squandered it. I'll add that Bush managed to use his crisis to create an vast new Cabinet department dedicated to domestic security, get Congress to pass a https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1327610811293069312

draconian law suppressing civil liberties and another law authorizing permanent war, declare another war, and have it all supported by a lot of Democrats. Not only did Bush get his own party but also some liberals and Democrats to completely embrace, openly, the idea of

an American empire. And he did all of this under the following aegis: we—conservatives, America— create reality to which all must bend. I don't think the difference between Bush and Trump is merely one of competence or empathy, as Matt suggests, nor is it about the personality/

character of each man. It's about a party that is serious about power and its use versus one that does not (except for Mitch McConnell, and even he has nowhere near the transformative ambitions that the party under Bush had). This is something that our accounts of the Trump

regime need to grapple with better.