David Shapiro: Hawaii political leaders always posture but never learn

We near the end of the darkest year in most of our lifetimes with hope for 2021 because of COVID-19 vaccines, but also fear that political leaders who have fumbled so much of the pandemic response will give an encore for the recovery.

Feeding the worry is recent buffoonery on Hawaii’s tourism reopening, which leaves us uncertain where we stand on either controlling the coronavirus or bringing back our economy.

Gov. David Ige torpedoed Safe Travels Hawaii, which allowed visitors who got negative COVID tests within 72 hours of departure to skip Hawaii’s 14-day quarantine, by abruptly changing the rules in a way that made little sense and caught travel partners unprepared.

The new rule required visitors who haven’t received test results upon arrival to quarantine the entire 14 days — even if a negative result comes in after arrival. It raised the risk of booking a Hawaii vacation, and cancellations came fast.

Chaos ensued as Lt. Gov. Josh Green, Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell, neighbor island counties, the House COVID select committee and visitor industry leaders proposed separate alternative plans that Ige mostly ignored.

As usual, they can’t talk to each other before key decisions are made, only shout at each other after a screw-up.

The credibility of Hawaii’s travel program was instantly blown. CVS, one of the state’s main pre-test suppliers, effectively pulled out. Kauai bailed from Safe Travels. Some hotels that had only recently reopened closed again, and airlines cut Hawaii flights.

Furloughed tourism workers and businesses dependent on tourism faced dire prospects with unemployment benefits soon running out and hopes of even a modest tourism recovery pushed well into 2021.

The botched reopening provided us little handle on the impact of renewed tourism on Hawaii COVID infections. Ige produced scant data to support his rules change, and Green cut corners on his promise to test 10% of visitors four days after their arrival to check the effectiveness of the preflight tests.

The missteps are maddening after the state had eight months to plan a safe, sensible and stable resumption of tourism.

Once again our fatal flaw is that no matter how dire our circumstances, our anemic political leadership is unable to rise above factional rivalries and personal jealousies to put the public interest first.

Ige is too prideful to accept needed help, while Green and Caldwell seem unable to view a crisis that is devastating the lives of people less well off than them as anything more than a stage for the early skirmishes of their 2022 battle to succeed Ige.

After all the months of mismanagement of unemployment payments, rental assistance, COVID testing, contact tracing and now tourism reopening, how can we be confident they’ll do better as we await a plan for a vaccine that is challenging to transport, store and deliver?

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.