The autopen has long been used by politicians.
The more they need to sign things, the more likely they are to use one.
However, when word broke that Joe Biden’d been using the autopen, not to just sign photos to admiring fans – both of them, apparently — all hell broke loose.
His staff, aware of Biden’s four-year vacation in Lala Land, began using his autopen to sign executive orders, for instance, but most of all, pardons.
Biden seemed to authorize thousands of pardons for people in prison or those who might one day face criminal charges – like Hunter – many of whom he’d never heard of.
In this, there was nothing specifically significant, except for one small point.
Only the president can sign a presidential pardon. Like signing bills into law or signing executive orders, this can’t be delegated.
A close analogy: when someone stands before a judge in open court, swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, nobody else can do that for him.
So, if it turns out that Biden did not personally sign those thousands of pardons, those are not real. Nobody but the president – not even a machine programmed to sign the president’s name on his behalf – can issue a pardon. Not the vice president, not the chief of staff, not even Dr. Jill.
I’m sure many people think the autopen is something new. But that’s not so. Thomas Jefferson used first autopen – called the “polygraph” back in 1803.
The first “modern” autopen went to market in 1942. Since then, it’s kept on improving. Believed – but not verified – JFK was the first president to use an electronic pen to handle the demand for his signature for non-official purposes.
More to the point, I had my own run-in with one about fifty years ago.
At that time, I served on the staff of the South Carolina governor in his office of economic development.
I was twenty-two, maybe twenty-three years old when I first served as editor of South Carolina Economic Trends. In that role, I also wrote speeches on economic development for the governor. Ranked 49th out of 50 states, we did all we could to attract new businesses. Our unofficial motto? “Thank God for Mississippi.”
We were in a state of flux. When I came to work there, the governor was a Democrat, who later became ambassador to Kuwait. The second governor I served was also the first Republican since Reconstruction to hold the state’s highest office. This Republican governor later went on to serve the Reagan administration as Secretary of Energy.
However, this is about the first uses of the autopen, not about politics. Under the Republican administration, I was called upon to write a speech – about 20 minutes – for the governor to deliver to a meeting in Toronto. I limited the talk on the advice of the one-time Methodist bishop in Georgia, when I was considering a scholarship to Emory University’s seminary.
“Ned,” he said, “Remember that nobody gets saved after the first twenty minutes.” More than fifty years later, that remains sound advice.
When the governor returned home, word swiftly trickled down to my lowly status. The governor really liked my speech. Even then I knew that, for a speech to be effective, the speech must do three things:
First, it has to help the speechmaker look smarter than he really is. This governor wasn’t a dope – he was (in civilian life) a successful oral surgeon. I’m sure he knew everything worth knowing about bicuspids and incisors, not to mention the braces worn by the future Miss South Carolina.
However, when it came to economic development, he was essentially clueless. This also applied to his immediate predecessor.
It wasn’t a great trick to make either of them sound brighter than they were.
However, there were two other things I’d needed to remember. The audience must learn at least one thing they didn’t know. This made them feel the speaker knew what he was talking about.
Finally, as the bishop once told me, “nobody is saved after the first twenty minutes.” I knew the talk had to be kept to under twenty minutes. This speech was successful on all three counts. I thought on this for a while – and about the fact that the governor actually liked my speech.
That was an ego trip for a twenty-two (or twenty-three) year-old writer. Essentially everything I knew about economic development I’d learned on the job. My degree in journalism, with a major in public relations, did nothing to prepare me for the specifics – but I knew how to write.
Two things I needed to know in order to write any speech: I needed to interview experts and – what the local experts couldn’t tell me, I had to research. Easy-peasy, right?
However, beyond the ego trip, what could I get out of the governor liking my speech? After a bit of cogitating, over a Burger King Double Whopper with “extra everything” – extra lettuce, tomato, onions, mayo, ketchup and, I think, pickles – I hatched a plan.
First, I reached out to my contact in the governor’s media relations department, the deputy press secretary. He was my go-to guy in the governor’s office. In fact, he was the guy who’d given me the speechwriting assignment. Knowing him, he’d probably taken credit for the speech. That’s how things were done, politically. But that was O.K. with me – I’d learned early on how things worked in Columbia.
I asked him for a letter from the governor, not recommending me for anything, but just thanking me for helping him look good and effectively represent South Carolina. Besides, if I ever needed a letter of reference – knowing that the governor probably didn’t know my name – nobody would believe it. Instead, I needed a “thank you.”
I also asked for an autographed photo I could frame and hang on my office wall. As long as I was in South Carolina, that photo – and a Xerox copy of that letter – would be worth a lot. Once out of the state, it would mean almost nothing. But I had no plans to move.
So I called the deputy press secretary and told him what I’d like. He thought for a minute, then asked me to write the letter. “I’ll get the governor to sign it.” But I knew how he worked, so I asked him: “Will the governor actually sign this?”
“No, I wouldn’t bother him with this. Send me the letter and I’ll sign it for you.” That made sense. The governor was a busy man, cutting babies and kissing ribbons – or something like that. And I knew the deputy was authorized to sign letters like this on the governor’s behalf. “All legal as church on Sunday,” as we liked to say in the Palmetto State.
Then he thought a bit more, and hit me with a surprise. “Barnett,” he said, “you know you’re authorized to sign letters like this, and to autograph photos of the governor.”
And it was true. As Editor, of Trends, I got a lot of “fan mail.” It was just easier to let me handle it all. Both the governor and the deputy were too busy to handle these. I – being at the bottom rung of the ladder – was presumed to have all the time in the world.
So that’s how I became an autopen.
I wrote the letter, to me from the governor, then signed it in the Great Man’s name. I had lots of 8″ x 10″ public relations photos of the governor, so I signed one of them, too.
Actually, having done this so many times, I could fake a pretty accurate signature. In effect, I had just become an Autopen, Mark I, Mod. I.
Truth be told, I never used that letter as anything other than proof of something I knew to be accurate – he didn’t know me from Adam’s housecat — but the governor really did like that speech.
I wonder if Biden’s autopen knew what it was doing? Had he/she/it vowed to never abuse the authority given to it, as I didd I never knew exactly who had given me this power. Was it somebody, more or less powerful in the government, probably my buddy the deputy press secretary? We’ll never know, but it was fun while it lasted. Kind of like those gawdawful Double Whoppers, extra everything. Yum!
When he’s not forging the governor’s signature, Ned has been active in political campaigns, including three state-level presidential campaigns, along with lots of Congressional, Senatorial and Gubernatorial campaigns. What he learned writing that speech helped him provide this service for lots of candidates along the way.
In addition to his political campaigns, Ned has ghostwritten 18 books and an animated screenplay, and will have completed two more ghost-books before the end of this year. On his own, he’s written twenty-four books in his own name, dating back to 1982, including several books on political campaigns. He is working now on a book, “How to Win Political Campaigns,” scheduled to be out later this year. Several of the tips in this book have been published in American Thinker in 2024 and 2025. He can be reached at nedbarnett51@gmail.com or 702-561-1167.
Image: Benjamin Olding, International Autopen Company, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 3.0 Deed
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