I blogged the other day on how President Obama’s image of himself as a citizen of the world (see: Candidate Obama’s Berlin speech, 2008) is hampering his ability to deal with the Ebola threat.
Dr. Keith Ablow of Fox News has written a column that says almost the same thing. Like me, Dr. Ablow seems to regard the possibility of an actual Ebola epidemic in the U.S. as remote. Nevertheless, people are afraid, and our citizen of the world president isn’t taking actions that calm the fears of the citizenry of this country.
In a column on “Why Obama Is Allowing Ebolaphobia to Sporead,” Ablow writes:
Part of the preventive health strategy to help contain this psychological virus should be a reliable flow of information and bold policy from the Obama administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But, already, their response lacks the necessary element of steady stewardship. And that’s because of President Obama’s continuing reticence to put America first.
Here’s an example: A travel ban on countries like Liberia, where Ebola is epidemic, makes sense as a technique to keep the virus from accelerating here.
Such a travel ban would go some distance to stem the tide of Ebolophobia, too. It would symbolize our country’s intention to shore up its defenses against the illness. But President Obama is very sensitive to being defined in any way by the borders of this country. I think he sees himself as a citizen of the world and sees Americans as having infected others with our deadly economic policies for a long time, thereby inflicting untold suffering on developing nations. To now lead the way to America insulating itself from a scourge sweeping the very countries he seems to think we have preyed upon could, of course, strike him (if only unconsciously) as profoundly unfair.
Let me say this plainly, as a psychiatrist who has studied this president only from a distance: In order for President Obama to keep thinking of himself as the leader of the world — and not just the free world — it may be that our boundaries must remain porous, allowing illegal immigrants and, potentially, even diseases to flow through them.
The correct stance against Ebola is a medical-military one that replicates fighting a war in which the enemy has already come ashore and attacked a city — in this case, Dallas.
The borders should be sealed to travelers who have visited nations affected by Ebola in the last 30 days.