How public policy works
It was the exchange of the year in Arkansas so far.
A reporter for this newspaper asked Gov. Asa Hutchinson at his daily briefing if his aversion to a mask-wearing requirement during the pandemic spike was based on fear of a backlash. Did he fear that, with a mandate, actually fewer people would wear masks?
Hutchinson replied, “I think that’s exactly the argument.”
So, there you have it. Your governor doesn’t want to order mandatory wearing of masks because he is afraid of right-wingers who would beat their independent chests and refuse to comply. And then what’s he supposed to do? Put the unmasked into prison and discount their infections when they get them?
Should he try to take their guns before he tries to pry mask straps over their ears?
Let me state clearly the position of this governor and his health director on mandating mask-wearing. It is that mask-wearing is important, demonstrated by data to reduce the spread of the virus. The two men wear their masks each day to set the right example. But the goal is a high percentage of mask-wearers, and there is no evidence that requiring the wearing produces a higher percentage.
There are all kinds of easy retorts to that. Such as: Then why require seat belts—other than, you know, to seek to enhance public safety through public policy?
The governor’s point is that you can’t enforce a mask mandate. But you could get at that a few ways. The state-of-emergency guidelines for admission to retail outlets could be toughened. No shirt, no shoes, no mask, no brain, no entry.
It would be imperfect, sure, just as a seat-belt law is imperfect.
A seat-belt law doesn’t lead to mass arrests for the non-belted. It just saves lives.
My life and my beloved wife’s life were saved by that imperfection about 17 years ago.
We got run off the road and our car flipped. The headrest behind my head … the state trooper found it in the woods. It had not been belted.
We were dinged up only lightly. We didn’t recall buckling up. We’d done that by rote because public policy had made it blessedly commonplace.
If the same thing had happened to us in the 1960s, then I probably wouldn’t have been writing any more columns.
The abrasions across my chest from the seat belt holding tight to a big boy—those were the marks of good public policy, and it was good public policy even if some right-winger was speeding down the road unbuckled at the time.
That’s how public policy is supposed to work. You don’t mandate masks to take thousands of prisoners for noncompliance. You mandate masks to enhance their usualness and make for a safer public health environment.
Asa is conservative, if not the most conservative on the block. The underlying tenet of contemporary American conservatism is that government is bad and ought to leave us the hell alone. It’s that government can take its masks and stick them.
And that’s a fine principle unless something important comes up.
It turns out that contemporary American conservatism—espousing free-market live-or-die economic ideology and personal independence from responsible group behavior—is ill-suited for real problems and real needs.