This is my first time trying a writing task in GRE. I need some comments. Carcass

Question:


The author asserts that to measure the effectiveness of a country’s leader, we need to examine the well-being of that country’s citizens. I personally do not quite agree with the author. The effectiveness of a country’s leader could be measured by the citizens’ well-being, but I doubt if it is the best way to measure it.

Before going any further, it is necessary to clarify the definition of “effectiveness”. What does “effectiveness” mean? Does it mean the ability to govern the country? As a political leader, of course, one must have the capability to unite the people, distribute limited resources and make important decisions that can ensure citizens’ well-being. But from my point of view, besides these abilities, it is more important for a leader to have the talents to launch practical policies and lead people when the country is facing challenges in order to achieve “effectiveness”.

The biggest challenge that most countries are facing at this moment is the global pandemic – “Covid-19”. Since winter is 2019, the whole world has been suffering from this “powerful” virus. Millions of people lost their lives or their beloved ones. The business started to shrink, people lost their jobs and international trading ceased. Moreover, due to the continuous influx of infected patients, hospitals in many regions had been overcrowded. This required each country’s leader to deal with the situation wisely and effectively and the policies applied should be well-considered. In many eastern countries, such as China and South Korea, their presidents or prime ministers immediately appealed to the citizens to quarantine themselves and put on a face mask when they need to go outside. This order largely alleviated the severity of Covid in these countries, at least for a short period, since Covid is a contagious disease that can be transmitted in air. While a lot of political leaders in western countries were not able to carry out this order at the beginning of the outbreak of the virus in their countries, which led to a much larger number of confirmed Covid cases. I am not praising or criticizing any country or any leader, I am saying the ability to deal with challenges, or say the ability to make the right decisions, is critical for the development of a country, and hence is a better measure of a political leader’s “effectiveness”.

Someone might argue that the situation where a country faces a certain challenge is just an extreme case, a leader’s main responsibility is still ensuring citizens’ well-being because in the long term, having a good working environment, having access to healthy food, gaining a considerable income, and getting advanced education is still essential for most people. I concede that people’s quality of life should be the priority, and to measure the effectiveness of a leader, we need to evaluate the people’s well-being. And I also admit that the frequency of events like Covid-19 is extremely small. However, although challenges like Covid are infrequent, one single time might bring a country a miserable memory. Even in the United States, known as “the country of opportunities”, people are facing unemployment due to a huge economic crisis that Covid-19 brought. Moreover, the health care system broke down, thousands of patients were not able to receive proper treatments when they were sick. The president obviously was being very effective – caring about economic and people’s quality of life - before Covid-19 happened because the United States is the most powerful and wealthy country in the world. Nevertheless, it is still suffering deeply in this pandemic because the leader could not recognize the severity of this virus when it first started to spread in the country and did not give the proper order to lead people to face this challenge.

To sum up, the “effectiveness” of a country’s leader could be measured by citizens’ well-being, but for better measurement, I think the ability to lead people when there is a huge challenge in the country is a better measure in this case.