The Impact Of Political Polarization On The Trump Administration’s COVID-19 Response

Covid-19 has taken the world by storm since its outbreak at the end of 2019,and all countries have been hit hard to varying degrees.As a super power with advanced technology and rich medical and health resources,the United States became one of the countries most affected by the pandemic.The US government has not fully played its role in handling the pandemic,and the whole country had difficulties in forming joint efforts.There were lots of studies attributing the failure of US response to Covid-19 to Trump and federalism.However,considering the measures taken by Trump and comparing the pandemic policies of the Trump and Biden administration and other developed countries with federalism,it could be seen obviously that the two explanations were inadequate.Although Trump’s personal mistakes and the inherent flaws of federalism limited the effect of handling the pandemic to some extent,the influence of these factors was intensified by political polarization,which was the key to the failure of the US response to Covid-19.This paper focused on political polarization in the US COVID-19 response during the Trump administration.In this process,both political elites and the public were highly polarized.Partisanship within Congress and between Congress and the president has slowed the appropriations and led to uneven distribution of funds and medical supplies.The responses to Covid-19 of state and local governments were affected by partisan conflicts,leading to fragmentation of policies and greatly reducing the efficiency of controlling the pandemic.People’s attitudes and behaviors were also divided along party lines,which impeded the implementation of pandemic policies.It is worth noting that Joe Biden,who succeeded Donald Trump as the president of the United States,has introduced a series of pandemic measures at the beginning of his term.But they were also not effective.The author analyzed the formulation and implementation of pandemic policies of the Biden administration,and found it was also greatly affected by political polarization,which proved that political polarization was not a unique phenomenon in the Trump administration’s response to Covid-19.The competition and confrontation between Republican and Democratic parties ha ve had a continuous negative impact on the handling of Covid-19 and even the operation of political system in the United States.With the intensification of political polarization,the confrontation between the two parties dominates the operation of the US political system,leading to the decline of administrative efficiency and governance ability.The failure to respond to COVID19 is just an epitome of how political polarization is affecting American politics.How to deal with the impact of political polarization is a major challenge for American democracy.