Note to Slate and the Yankee Media: You want conservative. I'm still trying to get the straight skinny. The national pundits who are trying to pin the donkey's tail on Bush are missing the point. It's not whether he's conservative or a flaming liberal. These terms are so dang muddy and reek of Old Texas, back when it was a one-party (Democrat) state, before it became a one-party (Republican) state all over again. They don't speak to those MOR wishy-washy McCainites you fell in love with back in February, much less all us apolitical centrist-but-not-really libertarian shmoes. The economy, education, environment, quality of life, vision in planning, an individual's control of his destiny— these are the things I'm waiting to hear the generously endowed national media expound upon, not Evans and Novak or Matthews or King or even dear Slate spinning the typical D.C. talk. (Which raises the bigger question. If George really is the decent fellow I saw in my close-up encounters, why on God's earth would he want to leave the cushy gig he's got in Austin for the District and all the nitpicking and headaches that go with that job?)
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StumbleUponYou could start by taking a break from examining the lint in G.W.'s navel for traces of coke to ponder his record as the leader of Texas, to see if he might or might not be able to step into the national footprint.
You might find what's good for Texas is good for the rest of the nation. Or maybe not.
Take education. Yes, Paul, the improvement of TAAS test scores have been on Bush's watch, but there's a whole lot more to education than that. How do our SATs stack up nationally? Hope it's higher than our teachers' salaries. Real leadership would be pressuring the legislators to raise those teacher salaries high enough where they could actually afford to live in Austin. And wasn't it Bush family nemesis H. Ross Perot who started this whole education reform movement in Texas with No Pass No Play in the first place? Have Texas schools become such a model that schools in Illinois, California, and New York want to be just like us?
Same goes for the environment. I'm not sure the rest of the nation is too hot about emulating our air quality standards either, much less the toothless enforcement powers of our version of the EPA, but I may be wrong. And where exactly does he stand on the Endangered Species Act, which may not mean much to you but sure does to me.
Or guns. Or the death penalty. We're OK with them. But I know we're not like everywhere else in the United States.
The one thing his record might not reflect if examined by the national press is the economy. Texas has enjoyed a pretty good run as of late, but I have the feeling practically any tinhorn, even Clayton Williams, could have ridden this wild horse, and even as we're profiting from high tech and NAFTA here in Central Texas, we're suffering with congestion and higher prices all around. I'm more concerned that a guy could run through $60 million in less than a year just to run for political office in the primaries. He spent that money like a drunk liberal.
In the end, it may actually boil down to the vision thingie, and I'm still not sure where G.W. will want to go, if he gets to drive the bus. Will I be able to relate? That's what I keep asking myself.
Sure he appears to have more decency and character than Clinton, but I believe Gore does, too. And I don't know if I'll be able to forget some of the pandering back in the primaries.
One last thing, just among us Texans: Hey, did ya'll notice when he was campaigning post-New Hampshire, how the farther he got from home, the thicker and more twisted his accent got? What was up with that?
Joe Nick
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Reader Response from The Fray:
[Note: Should be read after most recent Dialogue entry of the week.]
I find Ms Hart's (perfectly legitimate) complaint [Wednesday] about the "news columns"--ie, that they're showing an abominable if visceral loathing of Mr Bush--quite charming in its innocence. She seems to have somehow managed to avoid realizing that such an attitude has colored reporting of the Clinton administration for years, of Mr Gore, and indeed of just about any gopher who stuck his head up far enough to be hit with a mallet. The sole recent exception---the esteemed Senator from Arizona---avoided this solely by pandering to the reporters' idiot sense of their own moral and intellectual superiority and even he would have been savaged had he had any chance of victory.
I don't particularly like Mr Bush, but he was elected twice by a real state and he did manage to generate an awful lot of money and support among real people. I'm not awfully fond of Mr Gore, but he is pretty smart and well-educated and any sensible analysis of his fundraising activities needs to balanced against a history in which Republicans outspent Democrats dramatically--it's hard not to see Republican complaints about the Clinton/Gore fundraising as analogous to their complaints about many of the administration's policies: how dare they steal our issues/our techniques?
I think they both deserve to be treated seriously, courteously, and dispassionately. The chance of this happening in the current media atmosphere is about equal to the chance I will wake up tall, blonde, and skinny. Why does not a professional journalist realize this as well?
--Alan Kornheiser
(To reply, click here.)
(3/31)
I'm not surprised Governor Bush could impress the Texas Monthly writers with his policy expertise in a friendly, sympathetic small-group discussion. Most journalists hardly study policy at all; very little expertise is required to impress them. And, there isn't a politician alive who does not look more impressive talking to a sympathetic small group than he does to a large audience.
I didn't see any recognition in their discussion that a Governor's education policy, however successful, might not be terribly relevant to the conduct of foreign relations and management of the Pentagon. Yet the next President is very likely going to spend much more time in each of these areas that in education, all campaign rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding.
Finally, I had to laugh at the comment that a dropped "g" at the end of the word "asking" identifies Bush as a Texan. Here in Wisconsin we have a very successful Governor who uses only two "g's", the one in "Governor" and his middle initial. I promise you that no one will ever mistake Tommy Thompson for a Texan.
--Joseph E Britt
(To reply, click here.)
Uh, who the hell is Joe Nick? And what is he so cranky about? Am I missing something?
--Paul
(To reply, click here.)
[Yes you were. Joe Nick Patoski replied here, filling in with the missing entry that made everyone else think he was cranky.]
(3/28)