When the history of the pandemic is written, “get your own ventilators” will be our version of “let them eat cake.”

As the coronavirus bore down on a fragile and ill-prepared public health system, President Donald Trump told the nation’s governors that they were essentially on their own in dealing with the country’s most severe crisis since World War II. “Governors are supposed to be doing a lot of this work, and they are doing a lot of this work,” Trump informed the press after his now-infamous conference call. “The federal government is not supposed to be out there buying vast amounts of items and then shipping. You know, we’re not a shipping clerk.”

While Trump delivered the message in his singularly callous way, his disavowal of national responsibility in the midst of crisis is unfortunately nothing new in US history. From the Civil War to the Great Depression to today, the need for rapid and nationally coordinated action in the face of grave circumstances has been thwarted by one of the basic institutional features of our political system: federalism.