because we make decisions based on ridiculous thinking. But my point is this. What do we know about how well, let's say, a different leader would have been in the United States? Let's say if we picked the leader of Germany, the leader of New Zealand, pick anybody who you think did a good job on the coronavirus, and tell me that you know for sure if that other leader had just been born American and had been the president instead of Trump that we would have gotten a better result. Because you can't say that. It's unknowable.

And if you use your common sense to just think it through, he probably, whoever that other president would be hypothetically, would probably get the same result because they would have the same limitations. They would come into an administration that had faulty tests from the CDC. Wasn't the president's fault, but they were faulty. You would have the states jockeying for power. We have a system where the states have a lot of control. They would be making a variety of different decisions just the way the system is supposed to work. That's exactly what it's supposed to do. I don't know that some other leader would have gotten a better result. But the country is not good at analyzing, so they won't make that comparison. They won't know enough to say, wait, wait, the only thing that matters is what another leader would have done in the same situation as president of the United States. It doesn't tell you anything to know how somebody did in another country because there are just too many different variables.

So point is, fear is always the big motivator persuasion-wise. Coronavirus has been our biggest fear, and the president is vulnerable to criticism because people aren't good at analyzing. So they quite rightly went after this. But the president, and I don't think this is getting enough attention, the president's instincts to downplay the fear of the coronavirus is politically probably right on point. Because you might say to yourself, Scott, I think the country would do better if people were more afraid. Maybe they would take more precautions or something. Maybe. That's entirely possible. But from a political perspective, if the president can take the fear off it, he can take the criticism and it won't hurt as much politically.

So if you are on a scale of one to ten, if your fear of coronavirus was let's say a nine or a ten, and he can bump that down to a seven, he probably wins. Now what do you feel about the risk of the coronavirus when you see a 73- or 74-year-old man who's got some comorbidities, got a little extra weight on him? What does it make you feel when you see him going to the hospital and shake it off in a few days? Less afraid, right? Now you might say to yourself, well I'm not going to get the same health care as the president. But even so, when you watch him go through it, you sort of relate to it more because it's somebody you sort of know. And you feel, okay, I just watched the cycle from beginning to end and there was nothing that happened there that looked extra dangerous. It could have been if he had not gotten the right treatment, etc. But your impression of it, right or wrong, just your impression of it, is less scary.

So I think that the president is knocking that down from a nine or a ten to about a seven. And you don't really see it. It's sort of an invisible play because what people are concentrating on is what that will do to the actions of the citizens. Will the citizens then expose themselves to greater risk than they should because they're less afraid? They might. That's entirely possible they might. But that will count much less. Let's say that the death rate is 235,000 but it could have been 232,000 just to pick numbers. Would you notice? Would the public say, ah, that was an extra two thousand people if the president had just said different things about his own infection? Two thousand people would be alive. Well we'll never be able to demonstrate that anybody died because of what the president said. It just won't be studyable. We won't know. And certainly won't know by election day.

That's my dog making all kinds of noise if you hear that.

So here's the thing. The president is doing a good job on the fear reduction. Now in order to win they've got to amp up the fear in the other direction. So right now we don't have enough fear about what would happen if Joe Biden got elected. What would be the thing you would fear the most? Well you can think of all kinds of stuff. He's like, well maybe he's a little too friendly with China, but you don't feel that is going to kill you tomorrow. It feels like some kind of long-term suboptimal situation. And then you say, okay, well he might do something with your healthcare, but it might not affect you personally. It might take a while. Maybe it would be okay. It doesn't scare you. You just have a preference.

So the president needs to apply some fear to his persuasion or it probably won't get done, meaning he won't win. What would be the scariest thing that they could persuade on? Well, street violence and crime, revolution, socialists taking over and destroying the planet. So I would be expecting that Mike Pence in his debate tonight, I think he's going to be pushing hard on the risk of socialism. And tha