What a president is supposed to sound like

The US president on February 26th 2020 as the country was being struck by a pandemic:

This will end. This will end. You look at flu season. I said 26,000 people. I never heard of a number like that: 26,000 people, going up to 69,000 people, doctor, you told me before. 69,000 people die every year — from 20 to 69 — every year from the flu. Think of that. That’s incredible. … when I mentioned the flu, I asked the various doctors, “Is this just like flu?” Because people die from the flu. And this is very unusual. And it is a little bit different, but in some ways it’s easier and in some ways it’s a little bit tougher, but we have it so well under control, I mean, we really have done a very good job. …

Whatever happens, we’re totally prepared. We have the best people in the world. You see that from the study. We have the best prepared people, the best people in the world. Congress is willing to give us much more than we’re even asking for. That’s nice for a change. But we are totally ready, willing, and able to — it’s a term that we use, it’s “ready, willing, and able.” It’s going to be very well under control. Now, it may get bigger. It may get a little bigger. It may not get bigger at all. We’ll see what happens. But regardless of what happens, we’re totally prepared.

The US president on December 29th 1940, a year before the country was struck by world war:

Tonight, in the presence of a world crisis, my mind goes back eight years to a night in the midst of a domestic crisis … I well remember that while I sat in my study in the White House, preparing to talk to the people of the United States, I had before my eyes the picture of all those Americans with whom I was talking. I saw the workmen in the mills, the mines, the factories, the girl behind the counter; the small shopkeeper, the farmer doing his spring plowing; the widows and the old men wondering about their life’s savings. I tried to convey to the great mass of the American people what the banking crisis meant to them in their daily lives.

Tonight I want to do the same thing, with the same people, in this new crisis which faces America …

We must be the great arsenal of democracy. For us this is an emergency as serious as war itself. We must apply ourselves to our task with the same resolution, the same sense of urgency, the same spirit of patriotism and sacrifice as we would show were we at war …

As president of the United States I call for that national effort. I call for it in the name of this nation which we love and honor and which we are privileged and proud to serve. I call upon our people with absolute confidence that our common cause will greatly succeed.

– Abagond, 2020.

Sources: Press Watch (2020); “The Great Arsenal of Democracy” (1940, text, audio and video) by Franklin Roosevelt; “The Way We Live Now” (2018) by Susan Jacoby.

See also: 

• The coronavirus
  • Trump on the coronavirus
• Donald Trump
  • Trumpspeak

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