I interned in the office of then Minnesota Senator Walter Mondale in the summer of 1969. Mondale kept a so-called first-name file of friends and supporters under the jurisdiction of office administrator Mike Berman. I worked for Mike. When letters came in with the salutation “Dear Fritz,” I was assigned to check them against the file and make sure that responses were not signed with the office autopen. My job was to sign them “Fritz,” in Mondale’s cursive style, to give his letters the personal touch. I got pretty good at it, too.
The New York Post has an interesting story that brings my long ago experience to mind. It addresses President Biden’s use of the autopen on executive orders — “raising crucial questions about whether he was fully aware of what he was signing, critics say.” The Heritage Foundation Oversight Project is on the case.
I’m a critic and I don’t care if Biden signed the orders with pen in hand or left them to an intern to place it under the presidential autopen. He wasn’t fully aware of what he was doing in either case.
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.