I tend to be more merciful on Donald Trump when it comes to Covid as he was very new in politics....
He was more than 3 years into being president. That's not like Bush getting hit with 9/11 after 8 months in, that's three full years of experience in governing as President, firing and replacing cabinet members and advisors, etc..
I don't think his political experience had anything to do with why he handled that crisis the way he didn't.. You could have put somebody like Steve Forbes in there, who had no political experience either, and he would have handled it completely differently.
The issue was not Donald Trump's lack of political experience. The issue was Donald Trump did not and does not possess consistent any political principles regarding the size and scope of government. He simply doesn't care about that issue at all. So, when the crisis occurred, he happily defaulted to the most expedient route because the size and scope of government was and is a non-issue for him. If it would have happened in the last year of an 8-year presidency, he'd have done the exact same thing.
....and there were very few who shined during the pandemic. Kristi Noem was probably one of the best. But she was an anomaly.
I would argue the reason there were so few was precisely because of Donald Trump delegating that authority to bureaucrats. That meant that any politician who oppose those measures was swimming uphill against the federal government. Absent the federal government taking those positions, I think a lot more governors would have done what people like Noem and DeSantis did.