scripture wars

We moved out of Texas two days after Ann Richards left office. While I have been back many times to visit family, friends and old colleagues, over time I let go of my life-long interest in Texas politics. Part of that letting go came from leaving the intensity of working in the governor's office. As my dear friend and colleague, the late Billy Ramsey often said after we left, "we're all a lot happier now." By that he meant that we were outside the pressure of making decisions that affected a lot of folk, outside the pressure of insider politics and the media glare. And we could now speak our mind, representing what we as individuals think, not what the boss thinks, or the governor's office thinks. Out of office, we no longer represent anyone but ourselves.

For example, I believe that Bob Bullock is not a saint.

There, I said it. It feels good to say that. He was a very complicated man with a powerful ego and he hurt a lot of people. His good is mixed up with his bad. He was important, but he was no saint.

There's a new massive state museum in Austin with his name on it, but part of the reason that this shrine honors him is because it fit into the myth that George W. Bush in the late 90s was a uniter, not a divider, and Bullock, who was Lt. Governor (a powerful position in Texas government) got along with him fine. The uniter was going to do to DC politics what he did with Texas politics. Get along with the other party. The pay-off for Bush was when he addressed the Texas Legislature in the presence of the at-the-time Democratic House Speaker Pete Laney and the widow of Bullock on the night that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on the Florida re-count. That was the last time we saw the uniter-not-a-divider.

This summer, my interest picked up when the Texas Democrats in the Legislature skipped town to keep their colleagues from passing a second re-districting map for congressional districts.

Lloyd Bentsen once said that in Texas, politics was a contact sport. Back in the 70s, some state senators did this to keep John Connally from manipulating the presidential primary. They were called Killer Bees.

Since the state has swung all Republican, we haven't heard much in ways of entertainment from the Legislature. This summer, the state got back into the game with the war over re-districting. Good and evil, proud and low-down, emotional and manipulative. The stuff that makes up the sport of Texas politics.

So I started reading Bill Bishop's Lasso, an entertaining blog about Texas politics. Yesterday, I noticed that Preston Smith had died. Smith was the governor in the late 60s who got caught up in a nasty scandal related to a Houston bank. The speaker of the House ended up in jail. The elective careers of Ben Barnes, somebody who LBJ thought would be president, and Waggoner Carr, the state's attorney general, got caught up in it, too.

But Smith was over 90, and when he died, a lot of people said nice things about him. Bishop thought that some of what they said didn't jive with Smith's record.

Which reminded me of the Bible in the Governor's office. Starting back in the 1940s, outgoing Texas governors underlined one scripture and signed their name in the margin, leaving the Bible opened for the new incoming governor.

Governor John Connally was supposedly not too impressed with Smith, who had been Lt. Governor under him. The scripture he left for Smith was from Proverbs 29:18 -- Where there is no vision, the people perish.

Later Connally denied that he meant anything negative in choosing that scripture. After Ann was sworn-in, I looked up the scripture and found Connally's underlined verse.

Which reminds me. My sweet father-in-love (not -in-law because the law refuses to recognize Partner and my relationship), who is a retired minister, recommended the scripture that Ann left for W.

UPDATE: That scripture was Amos, Chapter 5, Verse 15a:

Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate...