History is replete with examples of rather ordinary, underestimated people rising to the occasion to rally a nation and defeat a mortal threat.

Think of Winston Churchill leading Britain through the Blitz and the arduous slog of World War II. The idea of “the man meeting the moment” describes such people and such times.

Suffice to say that historians will not refer to this crisis and America’s current captain in such terms. With each successive day, Donald Trump proves himself constitutionally incapable of such leadership. Instead of meeting the challenge, he recedes.

If there was ever doubt as to the notion that governance matters, that is being put to rest while we pay the consequences.

So how did we get here? How did we end up with such an underwhelming, unworthy person presiding over the country at a time of such peril?

In a nutshell, Trump is a product of a wholly different virus, a political contagion that has been eating away at America’s political system and very functionality for a few decades. To be clear, Trump is not patient-zero. He was not there at the onset. His presidency, however, is the long-incubated culmination of it.

There are different interpretations of how this political virus first took root. One political species traces the origins to the Robert Bork confirmation hearings and the over-the-top rhetoric of Ted Kennedy and his Democratic cohorts. The other species contends the genesis lies with the antics of Newt Gingrich and his Republican acolytes.

For three decades or more, that’s been the story. Tit for tat…for tit for tat.

So it has gone in an ever escalating culture of accusation and outrage concurrent with a declining respect for good faith, shared values and any spirit of compromise.

The disease found further fuel in the drawing of legislative districts increasingly safe for one party or the other. And in this era of customized media in which information and balanced perspective often take a backseat to the high-school-like rah-rah of, “Hit ’em again, hit ’em again, harder, harder.”

All of which brought us to 2016 and a weakened political organism susceptible to the appeal of Donald Trump in first managing a hostile takeover of the Republican Party before overcoming Hillary Clinton, the embodiment of consummate insiderism with a distinct eau de scandal.

Now, four years later, a long-infected political system and an ill-prepared, ill-suited, often virulent president have met an even more dangerous threat, a real virus with global ambitions.

So far, sadly, the results of this layering of one virus on top of another speak for themselves. The United States leads the world in the number of COVID cases, the number of associated deaths and the rate at which the virus is spreading. Those are dubious honors, doubly so in that we had far more time than China and Europe to prepare. (While acknowledging that the figures out of China and Iran may be less than fully transparent.)

As the logical end result of our diseased political system, Donald Trump, arguably, is the worst person to have at the helm in the midst of a spreading pandemic.

You, informed reader, know the litany of misstatements, misjudgments and off-key remarks since the virus came to the fore. For critical weeks on end, he downplayed the threat, determined that no such little invisible thing would rain on his re-election parade.

Most unforgivably of all, he squandered two crucial months of time for the country to prepare – medically, logistically, psychologically. The universal, all-encompassing nature of today’s stay-at-home orders is a direct outgrowth of the failure to use that advance period to build an arsenal of testing kits.

Consider just a few of Trump’s quotes. Feb. 10: “You know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer it miraculously goes away.” Feb. 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA.” Feb. 26th: “Within a couple of days it is going to be down close to zero.” Feb. 28: “This is their new hoax,” meaning his Democratic opponents.

Topped on March 6 by what can only be characterized as an outright lie. “Anybody who wants a test can get a test.”

But the blatant falsehoods may not be even the worst of it. From the outset, Trump has seemed determined to use the crisis to settle scores with political critics. He has chosen to pit states against each other and against the federal government in the antithesis of any kind of all-in-it-together ethic.

Early this past week, he proclaimed that he, alone, would make the decision about when to reopen the country, asserting this was within his unilateral powers without regard to individual states and governors. Quote, “When somebody’s the president of the United States, the authority is total.”

It is certainly too much to expect this president to study all 85 Federalist Papers. But could he at least bother himself to read the Wikipedia write-up on federalism?

If there is any surprise as to Trump’s conduct, it is that some people are still surprised. His performance has been so predictably, assuredly in character.

In almost any crisis, the obligations of a leader are rather straightforward. Inspire. Show resolve. Unify. Be honest, up-front and tell the truth.

But for this president, truth is a foreign concept against which he’s built a wall. And “us” always takes a backseat to the narcissistic compulsion of “me.”

In these quarters, the objection to Trump has far less to do with ideology than with basic character and competence. The country has endured liberal administrations and can take a conservative one, no matter how those principles have been bastardized. Surviving utter ineptness and treachery are tougher propositions.

That is our unfortunate lot – to navigate a public health disaster of massive scope with a leader clearly not up to the moment. Political disruptors a la Trump are not quite so useful in the depths of such a disruption.

The day will come when COVID is a thing of the past. Or, at worst, a manageable unpleasantness with which we can live. Then, perhaps, there should be a collective calling to vanquish that other virus that has found an accommodating host in our political system for far too long.

Eric Sondermann is a Colorado-based independent political commentator. His column appears regularly on Sundays in ColoradoPolitics. Reach him at EWS@EricSondermann.com; follow him at @EricSondermann