The Myth That Democracies Bungled the Pandemic

The idea that dictatorships get things done while democracies dither has an ancient provenance and enduring appeal. When times were tough in the ancient Roman republic, the Senate appointed a strongman with virtually unlimited powers (but a temporary term of office) to tackle the crisis. Abraham Lincoln, the savior of American democracy and the Great Emancipator, suspended the writ of habeas corpus and arbitrarily jailed dissenters to maintain the Union’s resolve to win the American Civil War. The Italian dictator Benito Mussolini supposedly “made the trains run on time”—democracies cannot always do the same. Read Full Article »