Courtesy of NYT:

A sizable earthquake struck New Zealand on Monday, shaking Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern during a live television interview, but failing to cause major damage or disrupt Ms. Ardern’s calm demeanor.

The prime minister was speaking to a morning news program from Parliament in Wellington when the magnitude-5.8 earthquake struck just before 8 a.m.

“We’re just having a bit of an earthquake here, Ryan, quite a decent shake,” she said, interrupting the interview but smiling and holding steady in front of the camera and appearing unruffled.

She warned the host, Ryan Bridge, not to worry “if you see things moving behind me,” because the building she was in “moves a little more than most.”

When the shaking stopped, she continued the interview.

Damn, she got herself nerves of steel. 

Can you even imagine Donald Trump staying that calm in a similar situation?

Hell no, he would likely wet his Depends and then dive under a desk. 

I would like to brag that I would handle a tremor with a similar coolness, and several years ago that might have been correct. 

But after that last big quake we had about a year and a half ago I do not think I could hold it together quite as well as Jacinda Ardern

And it is that calm under pressure that helped her achieve this rather impressive feat.

Courtesy of NYT:

Ms. Ardern helped coax New Zealanders — “our team of five million,” she says — to buy into a lockdown so severe that even retrieving a lost cricket ball from a neighbor’s yard was banned. Now the country, despite some early struggles with contact tracing, has very nearly stamped out the virus, exiting isolation with just 21 deaths and a few dozen active cases.

That is what calm competent leadership can achieve.