WASHINGTON • With the US economy faltering and the political landscape unsettled as the coronavirus death toll climbs, a stark question confronts President Donald Trump and his advisers: Can he save his re-election campaign when so much is suddenly going so wrong?
After three years of Republicans' championing signs of financial prosperity that were to be the chief re-election argument, Mr Trump has never needed a new message to voters as he does now. At this point, he has one clear option on how to proceed politically, and is hoping an array of factors will break his way.
The option, which he has been brazenly pushing, is to cast himself as a "wartime president" who looks in charge of a nation under siege, while his likely Democratic opponent, former vice-president Joe Biden, is largely out of sight.
This gambit, however, requires a rewriting of history - Mr Trump's muted approach to the virus early on - and it is far from clear if many voters will accept the idea of him as a wartime leader.
There are other variables that he and his allies hope will fall in their favour: that the outbreak will slow and dissipate in the warmer months; that the individual states will get it under control; that the federal government's various measures will flatten the curve; and that enough voters will move past his initial efforts to play down the dangers of the coronavirus.
The great unknown - and the tremendous risk to Mr Trump's political fate - is that the human cost, the economic toll, and the longevity and course of the pandemic are all X factors that could be strongly salient, if not severe, by the time of the November election.
In perhaps the best-case scenario for Mr Trump, the patina of a "wartime president" could prove to be influential with casual voters who will not dig into the details of his belated response to the coronavirus, which included dismissing the criticism of his handling of the threat as a Democratic "hoax" and contributing to a slow start in testing for the virus.
"He is counting on people being so traumatised on a day-to-day basis that they will forget his inaction," said history professor Douglas Brinkley at Rice University.
"He can claim credit for the curve flattening at some point," Dr Brinkley said. "And hope people will be afraid to push a leader out of office if the crisis pushes into the fall."
Mr Trump's course correction has shown some quick results. An ABC News poll last week showed 55 per cent of Americans approved of his response to the pandemic, up from 43 per cent.
But the President is on uncertain political ground. His poll numbers in critical swing states like Pennsylvania and Michigan have been wavering, with most surveys showing him behind Mr Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
Republican officials are banking on voters seeing him as taking charge in contrast to the two men, who have been following the government's guidance about staying indoors. But the "wartime" strategy also presents risks.
Mr Trump's new posture is undercut by his resistance to calls for additional federal action from governors in hard-hit states. His temperament is also dissimilar to that of a "wartime president". Over the course of his presidency, he has struggled to stick to any bipartisan message, or speak emotionally to the pain and fear of Americans during crisis points like natural disasters or mass shootings.
"That's why it's so hard to be a wartime president," said historian Michael Beschloss, who is author of Presidents Of War. "Not only are you coming up with a strategy and tactics, but... you have to let Americans know that you know how hard this is for them."
Mr Trump's allies are aware that his re-election now hangs almost entirely on how he handles the crisis sparked by the virus.
And the question is whether he will be seen as president George W. Bush was in the aftermath of the Sept 11, 2001 attacks, when he was widely viewed as bringing the nation together, or if he will be compared to Mr Bush during Hurricane Katrina, when he tried to minimise a crisis that eventually became too big.
NYTIMES
