No one needs to be taking credit for how the coronavirus crisis is being handled. 

History will judge that in due time. 

While we are in the middle of the crisis is no time for grandstanding or accolades. 

We need leaders who are focused, on the job and selfless. 

One of our founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, and one of our most loved leaders, President Ronald Reagan, believed we would all be amazed with how much we could accomplish if none of us cared who gets the credit. 

This week, it took Gov. Brian Kemp almost 40 minutes to tell the people of Georgia that he would be issuing a statewide shelter-in-place order. 

Why did he take 40 minutes? Mostly because he had to take up so much oxygen telling the people of Georgia all the things he and his administration have done since the outbreak of the pandemic in Georgia. 

Governor, we are all going through it and it is not about how the state is performing. It is about our health and, sadly, in some cases, our lives. 

But as for how the state is doing, when Kemp’s administration finally got to a place where it was forced to issue the shutdown, 32 states had already issued the order and Georgia already had the sixth or seventh most cases of COVID-19 in the country, with some Georgia counties having among the highest per capita rates in the nation. 

What took so long? 

Why did Georgia draw the ire of pundits and political satirists? 

Why did mayors of many Georgia cities feel like they had to put unprecedented pressure on the governor to act? 

Why did Kemp resist doing what most of the nation’s governors had already done, and why did he seem to ignore the urging of lawmakers, including pressure from members of his own Republican party? 

Then, after he said he was going to issue an order, why did it take him so long — as the people of Georgia waited and waited and waited all day long Thursday — to provide the details of the rambling order? Given how long it took to come to the decision in the first place, shouldn’t the details have already been thought out? 

Was our governor not paying attention to, or respecting, the science? 

Was he not paying attention to Georgia’s mayors and to county leaders across the state who were looking for leadership and direction? 

Was he not reading the news? 

Maybe when you are so very busy compiling lists of things that you and your administration can give yourselves credit for every single time you step behind a microphone, it is easy to miss the fact that the Centers for Disease Control, in your own state, has said for quite some time that COVID-19 can be spread by asymptomatic people infecting others around them. 

Governor, you are not up for reelection this year so there is no need to campaign right now. There is plenty of time for that later. 

Furthermore, the shelter-in-place order is a mask full of holes that just doesn’t go far enough in protecting all of us from the spread of this dangerous virus. 

Some are interpreting it to mean “Georgia stay at home, unless, of course, you don’t want to.” The shelter-in-place order is so vague that emergency management agencies across the state, along with law enforcement and city and county leaders, are now getting calls from residents asking what they can and cannot do under the declaration. 

Hopefully, the vast majority of people will look beyond the grandstanding, the self lauding and the political campaigning and just stay home. 

 

CNHI Deputy National Editor Jim Zachary is editor of The Valdosta Daily Times and president of the Georgia First Amendment Foundation.