Donald Trump speaks to reporters separated by social distancing, April 2020

The Coronavirus (COVID-19) emergency could have been a shining moment for Donald Trump. American voters really only need two things from their president in a major crisis: First, they need unity. Second, they need competence. Unfortunately, Trump has been unable to display either one.

Trump has utterly failed to unify America. Recall George W. Bush after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, standing on a pile of rubble at “Ground Zero” that, just three days earlier, had been the World Trade Center, telling the American people:

I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people – and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.

For a short time, at least, the country was unified, and Bush’s approval rating was a sky-high 90 percent (until he misused such unity, for example, to start an unrelated, disastrous war in Iraq).

Likewise, Bill Clinton gave us comforting words of unity after the 1995 domestic terrorist attack on the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, in both a speech immediately after the attack and a separate memorial prayer service four days later. Barack Obama also provided a unifying message of strength in announcing that U.S. forces had killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, after which crowds of young people gathered outside the White House to cheer President Obama’s action.