Our elected leaders regularly lecture us about the importance of pulling together to get through the coronavirus pandemic.

They’re just incapable of setting the example.

COVID-19 infections and deaths have soared in the past month, our economy is sunk and we’re in our second lockdown, still lacking vital tools to come out of it safely — transparent data, rapid testing, contact tracing and means to quarantine the infected.

The state Health Department is in tatters and agencies responsible for unemployment insurance, corrections and economic development have failed.

As we plead for common purpose in this crisis of our lifetimes, never before has our public leadership been more fractured and ineffective.

Gov. David Ige is unsteady, secretive and increasingly isolated as the challenge overwhelms him.

The Legislature devoted its first COVID session to hiding money from Ige, and the top headline in its second session was pay raises for public workers. What little aid lawmakers extended the suffering public was mostly vetoed by Ige in a tiresome game of undoing each other’s work.

Good ideas from House and Senate oversight committees are negated by vicious hectoring of the administration that defeats productive communication.

Lt. Gov. Josh Green and Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell jockey for notice in their competition to succeed Ige in 2022, U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard hurls Twitter bombs at the governor hoping to regain relevance after a poorly received presidential run, and U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz declares the state’s performance “objectively terrible.”

These are all Democrats untethered to any guiding ethic.

At one time, the late U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye might have stepped in as Hawaii’s respected elder statesman. He didn’t have power to dictate an outcome, but had the clout to call together feuding parties to talk out differences and seek a common path forward.

There are no current leaders of near comparable stature.

Schatz has made some effort to be the adult in the room, but he comes out of the toxic factionalism in the Hawaii Legislature that’s the root of much of the mistrust.

U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono does her own thing and has never been looked to by fellow elected officials for leadership.

Our five former governors have tried too much political kingmaking to be recognized by all factions as honest brokers in facilitating a productive path forward.

In the absence of an Inouye-like figure, the only hope is for one or more of the discordant parties to be the better person, to rise above ego and personal ambition, to recognize that everybody has something to contribute, to fight for collaboration instead of rivalry, to bring everybody to the table to find a way out of this crushing disaster for Hawaii.

It won’t happen via tweets or press releases, only by good faith gestures that value listening as much as talking.

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.