If you do not know Mitch Daniels, you should.
He was arguably the most successful Republican governor in Indiana history, a potential 2012 presidential candidate, and is now one of the only right-thinking university presidents who followed the science from day one of the coronavirus pandemic and kept students in school, in-person.
The Purdue University president currently has a scathing guest column in the Washington Post, criticizing the Biden administration’s haphazard and often dubious government mandates. The piece received nearly 1,500 comments in its first 18 hours.
After noting that most U.S. presidents attempt “workarounds,” Daniels observes that “the pace and deviousness of these machinations have, if anything, increased under the new regime.”
Noting the Biden administration directed OSHA to impose an “emergency temporary standard” on private employers of 100 employees or more to require coronavirus vaccination or face fines, Daniels claims Biden offered “no seeking statutory authority, no rulemaking and comment process, just a sudden ukase from on high.”
Considering the unconstitutionality of the edict, White House staff and compliant media explained the maneuver truly was a “workaround.”
OSHA doing this vaxx mandate as an emergency workplace safety rule is the ultimate work-around for the Federal govt to require vaccinations.
— Stephanie Ruhle (@SRuhle) September 9, 2021
Daniels hits on that term often, claiming, “This end-run of all prescribed procedures joined a growing parade of such maneuvers.”
He also mentions the Federal Trade Commission’s “preemptive workaround” in September that withdrew a popular rule on acquisitions that brought “clarity to merger decision-making. More than a year of internal deliberations and public comments were cast aside in days.”
Finally, the former OMB director under President George W. Bush argues that the pandemic “offered countless workaround opportunities” and excuses for “public sector incompetence.”
“A White House approval of ‘booster shots for all’ not only short-circuited the Food and Drug Administration’s ‘gold standard’ approval process, it ignored a contradictory agency recommendation,” Daniels explains. “It was just a simple workaround. Ideas for redesigning the machinery of self-governance are always in order, and sometimes badly needed. But discarding or violating rules while they are still in effect is corrosive of the trust on which all depends. It furthers the already pervasive notion that, rules be damned, the fix is in.”
The former two-term governor closes the op-ed by claiming, “Eschewing ‘working around’ and returning to ‘working within’ would be a step back toward the comity, community and public confidence we now see so little of.”
America could use more rational, clear-thinking leaders like Mitch Daniels.
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