You misunderstand. In this narrow sense I agree with you and Doser that he handled the pandemic expertly and not either irresponsibly, unreasonably, or irrationally, but how the pandemic bit him in the patootie was that he couldn't gather up himself enough to continue his flawless electioneering. His electioneering stumbled, and it was only because of the pandemic. Had he entertained the notion of a global pandemic beforehand I'm sure that he would have hit that one out of the park, like hit literally every other pitch out of the park to that point, regarding his electioneering.
Basically no one expects the Spanish Inquisition. You can't fault him for not anticipating the pandemic. No one did, even those who did anticipate it, it was clear that they did not anticipate it enough to impact politics hard enough so that we didn't all stumble around like a bland man for as long as we did. And every single country had problems with the pandemic, there wasn't a single one that evaded the thing, not even South Korea or Taiwan, or the Scandinavians. Everyone eventually succumbed to the thing, and everyone all looked the same, in that everyone stumbled eventually. President Trump was in good company.
But it did thwart his electioneering. I suppose he could have ignored the pandemic and let the experts lead instead of him, and he could have just focused on how to transform his electioneering strategy and assumptions and logic and plan, but instead he perhaps impatiently decided that it would be better for the country if he were out there leading the charge during this destabilizing time instead of secluding himself to work on how to win reelection.
It's too bad, but basically the pandemic ran him over.
