Early in the morning of March 28, 1979 near Harrisburg, Pa., the most significant nuclear power accident in the U.S. began. The unanticipated small loss of coolant event initially attracted little attention, but soon became a major story as the efforts to curb the event and stabilize the 819-MW generator failed.
The nation was soon in a panic situation fearing widespread radiation contamination, as then-President Jimmy Carter, a nuclear engineering graduate of Annapolis and a veteran of Adm. Hyman Rickover’s elite nuclear navy, recognized.
This year, the nation was in a panic situation over a pandemic caused by a novel coronavirus infection that rapidly spread throughout the world. It is a situation in which the world, including, prominently, the U.S. still finds itself.
How the U.S. government responded to these two major public health threats provides a look at how two very different presidents reacted.
Carter quickly recognized the fundamental expertise in the civil service and turned to his non-political experts to manage the crisis. Donald Trump 41 years later, resisted expertise and only gave in grudgingly and partially, continually claiming the spotlight and vaingloriously asserting that he was in complete command and knew more than the scientists.
Carter almost immediately turned to Harold Denton of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, to lead the U.S. response to TMI. Denton (1936-2017) was then the head of the NRC’s division of nuclear reactor regulation, a veteran whom Carter trusted completely. Denton’s Washington Post obituary noted, “Just one week before the Three Mile Island emergency, “he happened to watch ‘The China Syndrome,’ a Hollywood movie about an accident at a nuclear power plant. When a technician, played by Jack Lemmon in the film, looked at a gauge, Mr. Denton casually remarked to his wife, ‘That’s a faulty reading.’”
On March 30, at Carter’s direction, Denton helicoptered to the Middletown suburb of Harrisburg, where he found the scene in “absolute chaos.” The next day, he gave Carter, who understood what he was seeing, a tour of the plant.
Denton quickly became a calming force in the response to the accident, and Carter stayed in the background. It was a model of how a responsible chief executive should respond to a crisis. Denton’s soft southern accent and assured expertise dampened potential panic in the face of extreme fears, misinformation, and consistent lies from the utility the built and operated the plant, which went into service just a month before the accident that killed the plant.
Trump’s response to the novel coronavirus is a troubling contrast. Initially denying and downplaying the sweeping international pandemic, Trump then, apparently reluctantly, appointed Vice President Mike Pence to lead the U.S. response. Many observers suggested that Trump was setting up a way to blame someone else if the pandemic overcame his anodyne predictions.
To his credit, Pence assembled a team that could exhibit expertise. Chief among them was Anthony Fauci, the long-time head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. A consummate professional and scientist, Fauci had led the U.S. response to the 1980s AIDS crises, as well as threats from several unique virus threats over the years.
Trump consulted Fauci and apparently valued his views, even as he publicly resisted them and their implications. But the narcissistic president seized the platform and microphone to try to dominate the television coverage of press briefings of his coronavirus task force.
Trump was ill-informed, pushed unscientific ideas, and sowed confusion and doubt. Fauci courageously contradicted the president. He fortunately wasn’t fired, although he probably would have been if his pushback had been in private.
Carter, despite his failings as a president, handled the TMI meltdown properly. Trump failed the crisis test, delaying government action by weeks, as the nation’s governors of both parties stepped in to fill the policy vacuum. Both Harold Denton and Tony Fauci emerged as exemplars of what we want from our non-partisan civil servants.
A note of full disclosure. I knew Harold Denton well, as I worked briefly for the NRC shortly after it was established and covered him and the agency for many years. I also knew Tony Fauci slightly in the mid-1970s, when we were young employees working for the National Institutes of Health. At NIH, Fauci was seen as an upcoming star. How right that was.
And the notion that there is some kind of “deep state” within our government, a staple of Trump and many of his followers, is hallucinatory nonsense.
— Kennedy Maize