‘I’m all for masks’

TRUMP MASKS UP — One of the relatively clear findings of political science is that when members of a party are confronted with a new policy question, they will look to trusted ideological leaders for cues about what the “right” position is.

Consider the politics of masks.

When the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic was understood in March, it was mostly people on the left who decried the use of masks. Liberals argued that the science behind preventing the spread of the disease through mask-wearing was thin or, alternatively, that they should be reserved for health care workers so buying them was an act of selfishness. Mask wearers were shamed on social media by people on the left. But after the CDC promoted the use of masks, liberals, led by prominent Democratic politicians, quickly got on board.

On the right, a libertarian strain won the day and mask wearing became seen as an infringement on liberty. But one could just have easily predicted that conservatives were going to see a virus that emanated from China as a foreign threat and a national security issue that needed to be defeated with all of the U.S. government’s resources. This was how many people on the right saw the threat of the Ebola virus during the Obama administration.

What actually determined the consensus conservative position on masks for the first four months of the pandemic had nothing to do with ideology, and it had nothing to do with science, either. It had to do with personality — specifically the personality of President Donald Trump. He was anti-mask and, as the political science literature predicts, the conservative movement rallied around his position.

After months of anti-mask messaging, Trump finally reversed himself today.

“I’m all for masks,” he said, adding that he would wear one if he were in a crowded room and noting that he had a black one on recently. “I sort of liked the way I looked.”