Masks, mandates, and more control

New York’s mask mandate for businesses finally ended [on Feb. 10]. On [Feb. 9], Gov. Kathy Hochul lifted an executive order requiring masks to be worn indoors for some places, but she has kept the requirement in place for children in schools. There does not appear to be any scientific explanation for the discrepancy despite her continued insistence she is relying on objective data.

Lifting the state’s indoor mask mandate in any capacity is welcome news and makes sense considering the New York Supreme Court has ruled the mandate as an improper overreach of executive power. New York is no longer in a state of emergency, and as such the governor’s powers simply do not necessitate sweeping unilateral action. But why are school kids still required to wear masks while shoppers are not? Something isn’t adding up.

What’s most troubling is the fact that there does not appear to be an end in sight for the school mask mandate and it remains unclear what metrics the administration is using to make its evaluations. During [a recent] budget hearing, Health Commissioner Mary Bassett was unable to provide an answer or estimate when questioned when the school mandate might end. When pressed for details she responded, “We’re watching the numbers and don’t have a date for you.” As states across the country roll back their own mask mandates, “watching numbers” simply isn’t enough for New York’s students and parents.

Further, the governor is planning to make a number of temporary, expiring emergency regulations permanent without legislative approval. This is essentially lawmaking by executive order and flies in the face of basic constitutional separation of powers. I joined my colleagues in the Assembly minority conference in writing a letter expressing those concerns. If Gov. Hochul and her commissioners want to create new laws, they should send bills to the New York Legislature for proper consideration. The regulations in question are of significant consequence, too. Included in these proposals are measures that would: 

• Require hospitals and health-care providers to ensure all workers are fully vaccinated as a condition of employment;

• Give the health commissioner the authority to implement mask requirements for all New Yorkers over the age of 2; and

• Allow the department of health and local health departments to issue isolation and quarantine orders for individuals who have been diagnosed or exposed to a highly contagious communicable disease. 

 As we’ve witnessed before, New Yorkers lose out when any one arm of the government attempts to operate without the others. Gov. Hochul has shown too frequently her propensity to disregard the legislature and dictate the state’s COVID-19 response unilaterally. This isn’t a productive way to govern. Our conference, the state Supreme Court, and countless others recognize that and it’s about time the governor did as well.       ν

William (Will) A. Barclay, Republican, is the New York Assembly minority leader and represents the 120th New York Assembly District, which encompasses most of Oswego County, including the cities of Oswego and Fulton, as well as the town of Lysander in Onondaga County and town of Ellisburg in Jefferson County. 

A few weeks ago, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman made a startling suggestion. He proposed a cross-party 2024 presidential ticket: Joe Biden and Liz Cheney, perhaps, or Kamala Harris and Mitt Romney, or another combination of a leading Democrat and an anti-Trump Republican.

 Friedman’s reasoning is that the U.S. is at a crossroads, and he contends that the main body of the Republican Party “has shown that it isn’t committed any longer to playing by democratic rules, leaving the United States uniquely threatened among Western democracies.” Under these circumstances, he wrote, the country needs a “broad national unity vehicle” that would draw members of both parties. “We all have to be small-d democrats now, or we won’t have a system to be big-D or big-R anythings,” he continued. 

To buttress his argument, he turned to Israel’s current national unity government, which united members of the right and left in an effort to turn down the heat generated by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bid to delegitimize the government and judicial system. As Israeli leaders “treat each other…with a little more respect, and a little less contempt, because they are out of Facebook and into face-to-face relations again, stuff is getting done,” Friedman writes.

It was certainly an attention-getting column, and it’s hard to argue with the idea that we and our democratic system remain in perilous times. It may well be that to avoid a lurch toward authoritarianism, or at least toward a government that willfully violates democratic norms, some dramatic development like Friedman’s suggestion will prove appealing to many Americans.

 But looking back at the sweep of American history we also need to keep in mind that our system as it stands now, for all its flaws, has served us remarkably well. For more than 200 years, through some tough times, we have wrestled with the problem of how government should work in a democracy. We’ve persisted through economic turmoil, world wars, a terrible depression, and social and racial tumult. Each time, though the path has at times been harrowing, we’ve adjusted, found common ground, passed legislation that, in general, has made this a fairer and more just nation, and moved forward.

 It’s worth remembering that this is a pragmatic country that mostly prefers the middle to the extremes. In a writeup noting that 2021 saw the balance in party identification shift from leaning Democratic toward leaning Republican as the year wore on, Gallup pointed out that, overall last year, “an average of 29 percent of Americans identified as Democrats, 27 percent as Republicans and 42 percent as independents. Roughly equal proportions of independents leaned to the Democratic Party (17 percent) and to the Republican Party (16 percent).” Ours is still an electorate that is most comfortable in the center.

The truth is, it’s impossible to see around the next political corner. Yet if there’s one thing that our centuries of experience with representative democracy tell us, it’s that Americans are fiercely creative about exercising their democratic rights and that when things get out of kilter, they pull the country back on course.

 Don’t get me wrong. When Lincoln asked at Gettysburg whether this nation “so conceived and so dedicated” can endure, he was posing a question for all time. Our status as a democracy and as a land of opportunity for all has never been a given, and never will be. Lincoln spoke at a battlefield that was the result of the last time we failed utterly to navigate deep national divisions; the Civil War left such deep scars that we’re still not over them. 

 Clawing our way back from perilous times to a government in Washington that is capable of “getting things done,” as Friedman put it in his column, will take time, patience, and a willingness to compromise — on both sides of the aisle — that’s been in short supply in recent years. But we’ve done it before. My hope and belief is that we can do it again.          

Lee Hamilton, 90, is a senior advisor for the Indiana University (IU) Center on Representative Government, distinguished scholar at IU Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, and professor of practice at the IU O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs. Hamilton, a Democrat, was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for 34 years (1965-1999), representing a district in south-central Indiana.