Category Archives: State news

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Two quick Bush stories tell a bit about these men

I want to share two quick stories I have about men named Bush.

The first one is about George H.W. Bush, the 41st president of the United States who died Friday at age 94.

President Bush went to Amarillo in 2007 to speak to the community about leadership. They had a reception and lunch at the Globe-News Center for the Performing Arts. Because I worked as editorial page editor of the Amarillo Globe-News at the time, I got invited. We had lunch, then we got to stand in a long line.

At the head of that line was President Bush. He was meeting and greeting those who got to stand in that line. It was your classic “grip and grin” session.

My time came. I walked up to Bush and said simply as I extended my hand, “I just want to thank you, Mr. President, for your long and distinguished service to this country.” He bowed his head slightly as he said, “Thank you for that, sir.” We exchanged a couple more thoughts, then we turned to face the photographer who took our picture.

We were gripping and grinning at the camera. I cherish that picture to this day. Why? I had this feeling in the moment that the former president actually appreciated the expression of thanks from a complete stranger — me. Believe this: I offered it sincerely and with maximum gratitude.

A dozen years earlier, in 1995, I had the pleasure of meeting the newly elected governor of Texas, George W. Bush. I flew from Amarillo to Austin to meet with Gov. Bush in his Capitol Building office.

I arrived at the Capitol and found my way to the governor’s office. I was shown the way to the governor’s receiving room just outside the actual office. We shook hands, exchanged pleasantries and I told him that one of my sons had expressed many times his admiration for the governor’s father, the former president.

Gov. Bush nodded and said, “Your son has picked a wonderful man to admire.”

I was told I would get 30 minutes with the governor. I interviewed him on the record for about an hour plus 20 minutes.

The younger Bush clearly adored his father, whose pride in his son was well-known.

Now, to give you an idea of how effective a politician George W. Bush had become, there’s this addendum:

Gov. Bush was running for re-election in 1998. He came to Amarillo to be interviewed by the Globe-News editorial board. He walked briskly into our conference room, pointed at me and said in a loud voice, “There’s a good man. So, tell me, how’s your son?”

“W” learned well from Bush 41.

national news, political news, State news

I, Robert Francis ‘Beto’ O’Rourke, do solemnly swear . . . ‘

Roll that around in your mouth a time or three, maybe four.

Might it be what we hear in Jan. 20, 2021 at the next presidential inauguration? Some progressive pundits and pols are hoping it happens. I remain dubious, but perhaps a little less so than I was immediately after Beto O’Rourke lost his bid to become the next U.S. senator from Texas.

O’Rourke came within a couple of percentage points of upsetting Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. For a Democrat to come within a whisker of beating a GOP Texas politician has many on the left still all agog.

O’Rourke has changed his tune. He said the Senate race was 100 percent on his mind. He now says he is not ruling out anything. That he might be a presidential candidate in 2020. He’s going to take some time with his wife, Amy, and the three kids he featured prominently in his 2018 Senate campaign to ponder his future.

O’Rourke’s congressional term ends in early January. He’ll return home to El Paso and give thought to running for the highest office in America.

My desire for the Democratic Party remains for it to find a candidate lurking in the tall grass that no one has heard of. Beto no longer fits that description. He became a national phenomenon with his narrow loss to the Cruz Missile.

He’ll keep fighting Donald Trump’s desire to build a wall along our southern border; he’ll fight for comprehensive immigration reform. He said he plans to stay in the game. He plans to have his voice heard.

He might want to parlay his immense national political star status into a legitimate campaign for the presidency. My hope is that is he stays on the sidelines for 2020. However, in case he decides to take the plunge into extremely deep political water . . . well, I’m all in.

Sports news, State news

No legislative interference on this football matter, please

Texas House Bill 412 needs to go . . . nowhere!

What is it? It is a bill proposed by state Rep. Lyle Larson, R-San Antonio, that requires the University of Texas and Texas A&M University to play a football game sometime in November each year.

That’s right. Rep. Larson — an A&M alumnus — wants the Legislature to intervene in a decision that should rest entirely with the athletic directors of the respective universities.

I’ve already endorsed the so-called “end game.” I want the Longhorns and Aggies to resume their storied football rivalry, which ended in 2011 when A&M left the Big 12 Conference for the Southeastern Conference.

When the Aggies bolted, the series ended. Period.

But is the Legislature the right avenue to travel to bring this thing back? No. It’s the kind of feel-good legislation one sees on occasion. Legislators and members of Congress occasionally get all worked up when tragedy strikes; they seek a legislative remedy to prevent horrible events from recurring.

This kind of legislation sort of falls into that category.

I respect Rep. Larson’s desire to bring the rivalry back. I do not believe the Texas Legislature should waste a moment of its time debating it. Lawmakers have a lot of other matters to consider. You know, small stuff such as, oh, water policy, highway construction, education reform, tax-and-spend matters. The 2019 Legislature might even consider whether to rescind the authority it granted cities to install and deploy red-light cameras to catch traffic violators in the act of breaking the law; don’t go there, lawmakers.

Larson did make a cogent point, though. “It’s time for the folks in Austin and College Station to get in a room and make a deal to restore the rivalry,” he told the Texas Tribune.

You are correct, sir. They can — and should — hammer it out without interference from the Texas Legislature.

national news, political news, State news

‘W,’ Clinton showed us how divided government can work

Since I’ve already noted the arrival in Washington this coming January of a form of “divided government,” I feel the need to offer a two brief examples of how it works.

One party controls one branch of government, the other party controls the other. Such a circumstance doesn’t guarantee gridlock or incessant bickering, bitching and backbiting.

Donald J. Trump is going to report for work in January with Democrats controlling the U.S. House of Representatives; his fellow Republicans will retain control of the Senate. It won’t be a fun time to govern. It doesn’t need to be this way.

I give you two examples, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

Before he became president, Bush was governor of Texas. He was elected in 1994. The Republican governor took office with a solidly Democratic Legislature in power. Unlike the man who now is president, he didn’t insult, defame or denigrate legislative Democrats. He learned quickly how to forge alliances — even friendships — with those on the other side.

Two men became his BFFs — before the term became widely accepted. They were the late Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock, the crotchety, curmudgeonly Democrat who controlled the Texas Senate and House Speaker Pete Laney of Hale Center, the affable Democrat who ran the People’s House.

They formed a trio who respected each other’s skill and who managed to notch some notable legislative victories among them. They sought to give public school teachers a pay raise and increase test scores among students, they dipped into the state’s budget surplus to enact a tax cut, they furthered the push to invest in renewable energy resources.

Two Democrats learned to work with a Republican governor who, after all, had defeated a Democratic incumbent, the late Ann Richards, in a bitter campaign.

But “W” didn’t denigrate his legislative foes. He worked with them, understanding the need to cooperate when possible. To their credit, Bullock and Laney  understood precisely the same thing.

Bill Clinton watched the Democrats lose control of Congress in 1994, two years after his election to his first term as president. Newt Gingrich became the speaker of the House, Bob Dole rose to majority leader in the Senate.

Did the president let that loss of congressional power dissuade him? Hardly. He, Gingrich and Dole managed over time to work together to accomplish a budgetary miracle: a balanced federal budget, the first one of them in about 30 years.

They understood each other, just as “W” understood his legislative partners in Austin.

What lies ahead for the next Congress and the president as they embark on the second half of the president’s term? The indications are that it’s going to be a rough and rocky ride. It doesn’t help that Donald Trump doesn’t have the political chops needed to navigate and manage a political agenda with discipline and finesse. Nor does it help that he has bruised and battered so many congressmen and women with his insults and nasty pronouncements on Twitter.

Oh, and he’s that got that “Russia thing” hanging over his head.

I wish it were different. I fear we’re headed down the slipperiest of slopes. It need not be this way.

Sports news, State news

Excellent outcome, flawed tactic to get there

A San Antonio state representative has pitched a marvelous idea, but I do not believe his tactic to get there is the right way to go.

State Rep. Lyle Larson, a Republican, has filed a bill to require the University of Texas and Texas A&M University to play a non-conference football game each year. Larson, an A&M graduate, has put his name on House Bill 412, which would require the teams to play that game some time in November.

Oh . . . my!

First of all, I applaud his intent. I, too, would love to see the teams play each other again. The Longhorns and Aggies last played a tackle football game in 2011, before Texas A&M bolted the Big 12 Conference for the Southeastern Conference.

The Longhorns and Aggies used to play on Thanksgiving Day. It used to be part of Texas’s holiday tradition. It was a home-and-home series, alternating between Austin and College Station.

It’s huge, man!

But now it’s history.

Should there be a legislative remedy? Umm. It’s unnecessary. The Legislature must spend more time dealing with issues that are infinitely more critical to Texans than requiring an annual UT-A&M football game. OK, I get that such a football game is about as important as it gets for some Texans. But, c’mon!

I would like to implore the athletic directors at both schools to consider scheduling such a game earlier in the season. Most of the nation’s top-drawer football programs schedule a series of non-conference games at the beginning of each season. Many of their non-conference opponents are of the “cupcake” variety; they bring teams representing smaller colleges and universities into their mammoth stadiums full of fans, giving those smaller schools a slice of a large revenue pie to take back home.

That, of course, is not the issue with either UT or A&M. Both schools are loaded with money. Their endowments are among the richest in the world. Their respective athletic budgets are among the priciest of any in the country.

The issue here is to have student-athletes from these universities play football. It is to give loyalists, alumni and just plain fan(atics) a chance to cheer for their favorite team. It enables one of them to achieve bragging rights for the rest of the year when they defeat the other guys.

I appreciate Rep. Larson’s desire to see the teams return to the field of competition.

However, we should take this battle straight to the schools’ ADs.

State news

Tom Craddick: testament against term limits

Fifty years is a long time to do anything, whether it’s selling shoes, branding cattle . . .  or writing legislation.

Tom Craddick, a feisty Midland Republican, is about to cross the half-century mark as a Texas legislator during the upcoming legislative session. I’ve had some differences with Craddick, dating back to when I was editorial page editor of the Amarillo Globe-News. That was then. Today I want to say a good thing or two about this Texas Capitol institution.

He and I got crossways some years back when he engineered the ouster from the Texas House speaker’s chair of Pete Laney, a Hale Center Democrat, whom the newspaper supported. Laney was no flaming liberal as speaker and did a good job representing the Texas Panhandle while running a relatively smooth Texas House of Representatives.

Then the Republicans took control of the House and Craddick cast his eyes on that big ol’ gavel that Laney wielded. He enlisted the help of Laney’s Panhandle pals — namely fellow Republican state Reps. John Smithee of Amarillo and David Swinford of Dumas. They turned on their old friend, Laney, and backed Craddick for speaker.

We became angry with Smithee, Swinford and Craddick for depriving the Panhandle of a powerful voice . . . and we said so on our Opinion page.

Craddick sent me a testy letter in response. I responded with equal testiness.

That was a long time ago.

Laney, from what I understood, took his ouster personally. He retired from the House and became a lobbyist. Craddick, though, is still on the job, 50 years after being elected the first time.

Craddick ran the House with a heavy hand. It helped him shepherd legislation through a GOP-controlled chamber, but his tactics also created plenty of political enemies.

Since leaving the speakership himself in 2009 after enduring — ironically — an ouster from his fellow Republicans, Craddick has continued to be an effective legislator.

I applauded his work, most notably, in persuading the Legislature to impose a ban on handheld cell phone use while driving. Craddick was tireless in his pursuit of that legislation over the course of five legislative sessions. It was an odd sight to see: a Republican legislator in a heavily GOP state that endorses “personal liberty” working hard to enact a bill that critics decried as a “nanny state” measure. Gov. Rick Perry vetoed it in 2011, but then Gov. Greg Abbott signed it into law in 2015.

Tom Craddick, I submit, is a walking, talking, breathing testament against term limits. He’s been on the job for 50 years and, according to the Texas Tribune, hasn’t lost an ounce of zest for the job of legislating. He’s done a good job for his Permian Basin constituents, who continue to send him back to Austin to work on their behalf.

Tom Craddick is one tough dude. Stay with it, sir.

local news, State news

‘Master race’ crack catches up with county commissioner

Louis Klemp went out in a blaze of ignominy.

This clown is the now former Leavenworth (Kan.) County commissioner who told an African-American city planner from Kansas City that he — Klemp — is a member of the “master race.”

At first Klemp dug in, saying he didn’t mean any harm by it. He said his comment was “well-intentioned.”

Well, then he quit. He’s gone. Out of office and one can hope he’ll never be seen or heard from again.

But this brief episode brings to mind so many instances I have witnessed over many years of so-called members of the “master race” making utter asses of themselves in public, with no sense of shame, self-awareness or understanding of their public idiocy.

We often see such demonstrations of sheer stupidity when it involves those who belong to various white-supremacist groups. You know, outfits like the Ku Klux Klan, the neo-Nazis, Aryan Brotherhood . . . those kinds of yahoo groups.

My all-time favorite example of such stupidity being played out in public in front of the whole wide world occurred about 30 years ago in Orange, Texas.

I’ll set the stage briefly.

The Ku Klux Klan wanted to stage a rally to protest federal housing policy that allowed an African-American man to move into an all-white public housing complex in Vidor, an Orange County community with a seedy reputation as being “tolerant” of Klan activity. I attended the Klan rally to observe it, given that I was editorial page editor of the Beaumont Enterprise in nearby Jefferson County. I wanted to comment on what I saw happening.

I was standing near a TV reporter, who extended a microphone toward a KKK sympathizer’s face and asked her why she supported the Klan. The individual — a proud and devoted member of the “master race” — told the TV guy, in the presence of two small children standing next to her, that she didn’t “want my fuc**** kids associating with them people.”

Yes. It happened. So help me. As God is my witness.

Louis Klemp has told others that he was trying to make some comparison — goofy and utterly brainless as it sounds — between his teeth and the city planner’s teeth. He made some idiotic explanation that the two of them have “gaps” in their front teeth, which makes them both members of the “master race.”

Louis Klemp, with that “master race” comment, managed to channel one Adolf Hitler, who sought to create such a thing with his Third Reich. We all know how that turned out.

Good bye, Louis Klemp . . . and good riddance!

local news, State news

Speaker-to-be Bonnen is OK with the far right

Dennis Bonnen, an Angleton Republican, is poised to become the next speaker of the Texas House of Representatives.

I wish him well. He succeeds Joe Straus of San Antonio, the GOP strongman who stood up to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and the Texas Senate when the need arose.

I hope Rep. Bonnen is made of the same stern stuff. He’s a moderate who likes to work across the aisle. He has had his differences with the Freedom Caucus wing of the legislative Republicans who serve with him. But the Texas Tribune reports that almost all the returning Freedom Caucus members are OK with the new speaker, assuming he gets the nod in January.

I get that the Freedom Caucus comprises only 11 members in a 150-member Texas House. History tells us that far right and sometimes far left fringe groups develop outsized influence that reaches far beyond their meager numbers.

Given the nature of Texas Republican politics, it’s likely too much to assume the Freedom Caucus will follow the speaker’s lead and become more of a moderate influence in the Legislature.

Whenever I think of these far-right groups, I think immediately of Empower Texans, the right-wing loons who sought to topple two of the Legislature’s shining stars — two fellows who happen to be friends of mine to boot!

They are state Rep. Four Price and state Sen. Kel Seliger, two Amarillo Republicans who fended off challenges in handsome fashion. The challenge was financed by Empower Texans, the far right group that seeks to influence local political races all across the state. Empower Texans got its mitts on a number of contests, but given that I was living in during the spring primary season, I got to witness Empower Texans’ dirty work up close.

So, it is my hope that the new speaker keeps his distance from the Freedom Caucus and certainly from Empower Texans.

State news

Beware of what we wish for?

Man, oh man. I might regret getting my wish if it comes true.

I have stated already my hope that Texas becomes a major act in the 2020 presidential nominating and election process. According to the Texas Tribune, that well might be happening even as we digest our Thanksgiving turkey and all the sides that came with it.

The Tribune reports that Beto O’Rourke, the failed Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, Julian Castro, the former San Antonio mayor and housing secretary for President Obama, and U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, the Republican senator who’s up for re-election in 2020 are getting set to be heard.

That means Texas is going to be smack on center stage in this coming election cycle. Just think: We just got through a tumultuous midterm election that saw the House of Reps turn from GOP to Democrat and O’Rourke damn near knocking off Sen. Ted Cruz in that campaign for the Republican’s Senate seat. Oh, yes: O’Rourke’s near miss occurred in heavily GOP Texas.

Why the possible regret over getting my wish? The TV airwaves are going to be full — as in brimming full — of political ads that will repeat themselves ad nauseum. I’ve already griped about the midterm TV ad fare that kept playing on Metroplex stations. Enough already!

So we’ll have the primary election March 2020 that will feature an expected horde of Democrats running for president. One of them might be O’Rourke; I hope the young man doesn’t do it, because — in my view — he ain’t ready.

Then we’ll have the Democratic presidential nominee, whoever he/she is, likely squaring off against the Republican nominee. It appears that would be Donald John Trump, the incumbent president; then again, one never knows.

So we’re going to get a Texas-size snootful from all the players — big and small — on the national stage.

The past few election cycles have been conducted in states far away from Texas. Those other states have served as battlegrounds where the major parties have fought against each.

Texas well might join the “fun” in 2020.

Are you ready for it? Neither am I.

Sports news, State news

Missing this holiday tradition

If only Texas A&M University hadn’t decided to play football in the Southeastern Conference. If only the Aggies had stayed put in the Big 12. If only . . .

I’d be watching a Texas tradition today while consuming some turkey and all the other stuff.

Thanksgiving Day meant some good ol’ college tackle football between the University of Texas and them Aggies of A&M.

I wasn’t born in Texas. I didn’t attend either school. I’ve lived in Texas long enough — 34 years now — to appreciate the thrill, the pageantry and the excitement associated with this holiday tradition.

If only the Aggies hadn’t bolted to the SEC.

I have made the acquaintances of many Texas Exes and dedicated Aggies over the years. I have no particular loyalty to either school. Neither of my UT or A&M friends are “better” friends than the others. I do like to watch tackle football played at the college level.

My wife and I have attended one A&M football game. It was years ago in Lubbock, when the Aggies played Texas Tech’s Red Raiders in a windswept event at Jones Stadium. The Red Raiders won that game in a thriller.

Do you know what thrilled the daylights out of me, though? It was the sight — and the sound! — of the Aggie marching band walking onto the field. Talk about spit-and-polish precision!

Well, we won’t see any of that today. Nor will we get to see Bevo the steer roaming the sideline in front of the Longhorn faithful while his UT gridders play some block-and-tackle with their Aggie rivals.

Dang it, anyhow!