Failure is Not an Option?
In 1876, due to fears of the possibility of another Civil War, the Texas Constitution was written to disperse the governor's powers among a "plural executive" to prevent future governors from making laws without the approval of others. Executive orders that appropriate large sums from the budget and force Texans to do something invasive are precisely the kind of law that Texas governors cannot pass unilaterally. To the Texas governor it would've been perfectly foreseeable that the legislature would quickly convene and vacate the law as unconstitutional. If all of this speculation on my part is true, the only part of his plan that didn't proceed as he envisioned was making the CCSPI policymakers his scapegoats. Since the policymakers were mainly in the healthcare, advocacy, public health, and health policy sectors, as well as cancer survivors, he would've reasonably expected that our policy recommendation would call for mandatory HPV vaccination of all girls in Texas. When we didn't deliver such a policy, he could no longer blame the democratic, deliberative policymaking process for the mandate, forcing him alone into the political cross hairs. Perry's HPV vaccine mandate would later generate scathing criticism from his GOP presidential debate opponents and would eventually be an act he would publicly regret.
Narrative inquiry in bioethics