A day early or, if you prefer, a couple of long pandemic years too late, the federal government’s offer to mail free, rapid coronavirus tests to every American went online last week.
So did the latest test of a surprisingly controversial proposition: that it might behoove an ostensibly great nation to maintain a functioning postal system. President Joe Biden thereby launched headlong into an undertaking that his own press secretary explicitly dismissed as preposterous a little more than a month ago.
Not that it’s difficult to understand why any political communications professional would instinctively distance her boss from an endeavor with the magical and ominous quality of the proverbial chicken in every pot: magical if it more or less works; ominous if, like the poultry fatefully promised by Herbert Hoover’s supporters, it congeals into a government promise dashed by the anti-government ideology undermining crucial public services.
