https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/07/politics/donald-trump-leadership/index.html

Analysis by John Harwood, CNN

Updated 8:00 AM ET, Sun June 7, 2020

(CNN)"In a president, character is everything," wrote the renowned speechwriter Peggy Noonan. And therein lies President Donald Trump's inability to meet this American moment.

Noonan referred, in an essay commemorating her old boss Ronald Reagan, to the human qualities behind successful leadership in the White House. Empathy, courage, vision, decency, candor -- these traits have yielded the presidential moments that resonate through history.

The evident absence of those qualities in Trump leaves him uniquely ill-equipped to handle the intertwined challenges of a public health pandemic, economic collapse and racial conflict that the nation now faces. The results have inflamed enmity, division and hardship across the nation.

Consider some of the signature events that helped define chief executives over the last century. They etch an unflattering contrast with today's incumbent.

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Without naming him, Trump's predecessors in both parties have sought to fill the leadership void they see by speaking out. George W. Bush answered Trump's blasts against Democrats on coronavirus this spring by asserting "we rise or fall together."

After Monday's violent crackdown on protesters outside the White House, Bush declared that "those who set out to silence those voices do not understand the meaning of America." Separately, Obama offered a reminder that "this country was founded on protest -- it's called the American Revolution."

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