| Get Jonathan Bernstein's newsletter every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. President Donald Trump had another opportunity to wear a mask in public on Thursday, on his tour of a Ford Motor Co. plant in Michigan. He didn't do so — according to him, mainly to spite the media — although he evidently did put one on afterward. It's bizarre behavior, and very likely self-defeating for the president politically. Public-health experts have said, and have told Trump, that masks are crucial to safely reopening businesses and returning to something resembling normal while minimizing the risk of new coronavirus outbreaks. Trump's re-election surely depends on successfully controlling the virus and rebooting the economy. And yet the president has consistently downplayed the idea, including refusing to cover his face in front of the cameras. In fact, as Greg Sargent points out, Trump is doing this despite the public being overwhelmingly in favor of him wearing a mask. I can think of three possible explanations, none of them flattering. One is, well, vanity, or some other personal stubbornness. Trump doesn't like the way the masks look, or doesn't like having to wear them or really does consider it a point of honor to contradict the media's expectations. A second is that the president doesn't want to violate the wishes of his strongest supporters, and he has concluded that the armed demonstrators opposing masks and distancing restrictions are in his corner. It's possible he doesn't understand that he's putting himself on the wrong side of public opinion in doing so. It's also possible that he's using a con-artist's logic: Find the easiest marks and you can make a lot of money, even if they're a tiny fraction of the overall population. That's a logic, by the way, that can also work for party-aligned media, and one way that party-aligned media can undermine the party as a whole, which needs broad support from majorities (or at least very large pluralities) to win elections. The third possibility? Trump, like certain cable-news pundits, really thinks that elections are all about image, and so avoiding a Michael-Dukakis-in-the-tank moment is a first-order priority. In fact, that kind of image campaigning tends not to be important at all in presidential general elections. The condition of the economy is important; so may be, in this cycle, progress against the virus. Perhaps the most unfortunate aspect of Trump's decision is that this is a case where a president's enthusiastic endorsement for wearing masks and otherwise following best practices might really make a difference. After all, the economy simply will not rev up if people are afraid to go out of their houses, and a lot of people are going to be afraid if they see more and more folks — including the president himself — refusing to wear a mask. 1. Enrijeta Shino, Mara Suttmann-Lea and Daniel A. Smith at the Monkey Cage on one of the real reasons that a full vote-by-mail election isn't ideal. 2. Dan Drezner on the question of Trump and authoritarianism. It's possible that future presidents will emulate Trump. I suspect however, that most will realize the costs of Trump's actions. Especially, of course, if he loses re-election. 3. Ezra Klein on fear, partisanship and the pandemic. 4. My Bloomberg Opinion colleague Francis Wilkinson on Ohio in the 2020 elections. 5. Julian E. Barnes and Adam Goldman on briefing Trump. 6. And Daniel Dale on another Trump fantasy — that he won a "Man of the Year" award in Michigan. Trump repeats this all the time, but it is almost certainly pure fiction. Get Early Returns every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. Also subscribe to Bloomberg All Access and get much, much more. You'll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, the Bloomberg Open and the Bloomberg Close. | 
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