The Deep Politics of Vaccine Mandates

The debate over President Biden's vaccine mandates has focused, understandably, on the tradeoff between individual rights to make medical choices and the potential harm the unvaccinated pose to others.

The most important thing is that the Biden administration's "Mandate approach" is standard-issue progressivism.

The mandates exemplify a dispute that has been at the heart of American politics for over a century, ever since Woodrow Wilson formulated it as a professor and then president.

The pushback against vaccine mandates is partly a debate about these progressive issues concerning the president's authority and constitutional strictures.

Since Biden's speech last week spent a lot of time attacking Republican governors, it was also an exercise in preemptive blame-shifting, in case the mandates fail.

On his signature spending bills, like his vaccine mandates, Biden is pursuing a unilateral, aggressively partisan approach.

There are serious questions about whether sticks or carrots are the best way to increase vaccination rates; how to convince people to get the vaccine now that trust in public-health experts has eroded; whether politicizing the issue is self-defeating; and what authority Washington has to impose mandates beyond its own workforce.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/09/15/the_deep_politics_of_vaccine_mandates_146408.html