White House press secretary Jen Psaki claimed this week there is a “distinct difference” between Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Democratic governors who decided to lift remaining COVID-19 mandates over the next month.
She’s right. Though Democratic state leaders are now reaching the same conclusion on universal school mask mandates and vaccine mandates as DeSantis, the road they’ve taken to get there could not be more different. For starters, DeSantis did not wait until the polls started looking bad for his political party to take action. And when he did take action, months ahead of everyone else, he made sure individual citizens, rather than government bureaucrats at the state or federal level, had the final say on which risks they were willing to take.
Psaki, of course, sees things a bit differently.
“I would say there is a distinct difference between standing in the way, which Ron DeSantis did … of teachers, school administrators, and others taking steps to protect the students and their school communities,” Psaki said on Wednesday. “There’s a difference between standing in the way of it, threatening to pull back funding, and allowing for local school districts to make choices, which is what a number of these states are doing.”
Psaki’s goal was to make DeSantis seem like the bad guy. But a closer look at the policies he’s passed and the success they’ve had in Florida proves he was right all along. His executive order prohibiting school mask mandates, for example, does not ban masks in schools but bans school officials from forcing parents to mask their students. If a parent wants to send his student to school wearing a mask, he is free to do so. But so is the parent who does not want his child to wear a mask.
By contrast, Democratic states’ recent decisions to lift school mask mandates do not protect parents’ rights. School districts can still force students to wear masks even after the state mandate has been lifted, and parents will be able to do very little about it.
So, yes, there is a massive difference between DeSantis and other Democratic governors. He is willing to do what is necessary to protect individual choice, even if that earns condemnation from the White House. Psaki’s mistake is thinking this difference reflects well on her party.
