Thread by @bopinion

Covid-19 has revealed in painful detail that the U.S. is falling behind much of the world, not just in health care, but in most of the functions of government.

Simply removing Trump won’t solve the problem trib.al/p7TYvi0

Instead, Biden should do what other great presidents have done when their country has started to fall behind:

Look abroad and copy what works trib.al/p7TYvi0

The founding fathers studied the world’s most successful political systems, including:

🇬🇧Britain
🇫🇷France
🏛Ancient Rome

James Madison pored over comparative constitutions, while John Adams & Thomas Jefferson drew on their experience as envoys to France trib.al/p7TYvi0

That great tradition has continued:

➡️FDR based Social Security on foreign pension systems
➡️Ronald Reagan borrowed “privatization” from Margaret Thatcher
➡️Henry Kissinger based much of his diplomacy on European concepts trib.al/p7TYvi0

Nowadays, Washington has sadly stopped learning from abroad in terms of ideas, and rivals Pyongyang, North Korea as the world’s most parochial capital city.

Of course, this hasn’t been helped by a president whose foreign policy was “America First” trib.al/p7TYvi0

The contrast with the private sector is stark:

🌎U.S. businesses take ideas from around the globe
🌍Silicon Valley and Wall Street suck in foreign-born talent trib.al/p7TYvi0

If you need proof that America is falling behind, look no further than its handling of the global pandemic.

On the basic Hobbesian test of keeping its people alive, the American Leviathan has failed trib.al/p7TYvi0

🇺🇸The U.S. now has had more than 800 deaths for every million people, far worse than most of its allies -- with the exception of 🇬🇧Britain and 🇧🇪Belgium.

🇩🇪Germany, with about 200 deaths per million, has done six times better trib.al/p7TYvi0

The really shocking comparative numbers come from East Asia:

🇯🇵Japan has lost fewer than 2,000 people, a 100th of the U.S. death toll
🇹🇼Taiwan hasn’t had a domestic Covid case for more than 200 days
🇸🇬Singapore’s death rate is close to 5 per million trib.al/p7TYvi0

🇨🇳Most pointedly of all: China is almost back at work as normal.

Even allowing for some skepticism about its official death toll, it has plainly been far better at protecting its people from dying than the U.S. trib.al/p7TYvi0

China’s success may be partly down to autocracy, but other success stories are freedom-loving democracies.

New York City & Seoul are both lively cities with crowded subways and a wild nightlife: NYC has more than 22,000 deaths, while Seoul has a few dozen trib.al/p7TYvi0

East Asia’s supremacy in dealing with the pandemic is not a fluke. For nearly 50 years, Asian nations, led by Singapore, have been quietly building smarter and better governments. As a result, they lead on:

💊Healthcare
🎓Education
🚝Infrastructure trib.al/p7TYvi0

Other countries are doing plenty of clever things that the U.S. could copy:

🇸🇪Sweden’s public-private partnerships
🇩🇪Germany’s decentralized health system
🇮🇳India’s digital ID scheme
🇪🇪Estonia’s digital society trib.al/p7TYvi0

So Joe Biden should look around the world:

1️⃣Study what works in other countries
2️⃣Copy the best and avoid the worst
3️⃣Build back better on the basis of foreign examples trib.al/p7TYvi0