With great power (like presidency), comes great responsibility (like properly leading the country through a global pandemic) and with great responsibility comes great criticism where said responsibility isn't followed through.

They're not getting downvoted for a political statement. They're getting downvoted by implying that someone else wouldn't do a better job than probably the worst possible response to Covid.

Objectively, the response we've had from the leadership of the country has been terrible, and the effects are evident when you look at # of cases. Also objectively, any other response would have been better. Obviously, I can't tell with absolute certainty what other leaders would have done, but I can assure you it'd have been better than what we have now.

To say otherwise is ignoring the current state of the country and the response that has resulted in said state.

Technically, I'm being downvoted for asking two questions that challenge someone else's political statement (that aligns quite nicely with the general politics of HN).

> I really wish the parent comment kept out the last bit because the conversation then devolves to red/blue, left/right, white/black.

Me too, I completely agreed with the first part. I have this thing about about people dropping dimensions of reality and pretending they are irrelevant, or predicting the outcome of events on parallel dimensions of our universe, and stating those predictions as if they are facts. I consider this sort of rhetoric as part of the problem, but most people seem to overwhelmingly prefer it nowadays, provided the proper claims are made of course.

> How do we fix it?

This seems like the important question to me as well. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be a very popular topic of discussion.