Burnt Orange Report

Preview of the Ben Barnes Interview with Texas Monthly

By Byron LaMasters

I mentioned earlier that the January issue of Texas Monthly will feature a long interview with Ben Barnes. It'll be for sale starting Monday, but here's a preview. Barnes addresses the 2004 election results, faith in politics, his relationship with John Kerry, the National Guard story and his ideas for the future for Texas Democrats.

[Evan Smith's Questions in bold, Ben Barnes in regular (italics) text].

On the 2004 Election:

Why did you work so hard this election year as opposed to the past few cycles?

There was a lot at stake. I’ve seen Texas in good times and in bad times, and we can do better than we’re doing right now. When I introduce myself and say, “I’m Ben Barnes, from Texas,” I used to hear, “Man, tell us about Texas. Y’all are really accomplishing a lot of great things. I really would like to live there.” Now people will say, “You’re from Austin? It’s a great city. I’d like to live there sometime.” But Texas? “Hmmm, y’all are a lot like Louisiana and Mississippi and Alabama, aren’t you? Y’all got a lot of problems. Y’all got a lot of people in penitentiaries. Y’all are tough on them down there."

On faith in politics:

Do you have any idea why the Democrats had such a tough time attracting religious folks?

I don’t think they’ve been willing to talk about religion. They think it’s too personal. In my day, you put in your campaign materials that you were a member of the First Methodist Church in De Leon, but when I was running for state representative or lieutenant governor or governor, people really didn’t ask me a lot about my faith. But I want to tell you something: One of the most memorable experiences of my life was my mother driving me to church every Sunday. I went to Sunday school, and we went to the revivals. If there were fourteen services, I went to fourteen services. My mother made certain that I got that religious background. It made a big impression on me. It helped shape what few good things there are about me.

How does this tie back into politics?

I made the preachers very mad in the early seventies when they descended on Austin to fight against liquor by the drink. There were hundreds of thousands of letters coming into the Capitol about the issue, about how these preachers were so concerned. Well, we had liquor in brown bags and there was liquor on every street corner in Texas; I thought it was ridiculous for the state to lose out on the revenue. I remember standing up in the pulpit in the First Methodist Church and telling those preachers that I wanted to make certain they were going to come down to Austin when we were trying to pass a minimum wage for farmworkers and when we were trying to get medicine for sick children and when we were worrying about the mentally ill. If they were going to come down here to fight liquor, I wanted them to come down here to do God’s work.

I feel the same way about what happened in this election. I am proud the churches participated. They’ve got a right. But I’ll tell you what—maybe all these religious leaders who have found politics and who read Scripture, which tells them that they should do unto others as they would have done unto them, will be involved the next session of the Legislature in taking care of the kids kicked off of the Children’s Health Insurance Program. And I know that they’re going to be concerned about the fact that some of the poorest counties in the U.S. are here in Texas. I’m sure that our religious leadership is not going to be just worrying about abortion and stem cell research and gay marriage.

More after the jump.

On John Kerry:

>Let’s talk about John Kerry. Why did you support him?

About two years ago, he and I played golf together in Nantucket, and he asked me to be for him for president. I told him I had too many friends running: I had Joe Lieberman, Bob Graham, a long list of people. I said, “I’m not going to do anything to hurt you.” That was our discussion on the first hole—it was just the two of us playing. We teed off. And we talked for three, three and a half hours. He talked about Vietnam. We talked about how I was on one side of Vietnam and he was on the other. We talked about Lyndon Johnson, about his courage in doing the civil rights bill when it was so politically self-destructive. We talked about how he saw as a young man, and I saw as a young man, that you really could make a difference. We had a very deep, soul-searching conversation. I gave him as thorough a cross-examination as a person of my below-average intelligence can give someone. And I saw a side of him on that golf course that I had not seen before. I saw an extremely intelligent man, a man of deep faith and conviction. I came away with an inordinate amount of respect for John Kerry.

On George W. Bush:

Democrats I know have been profoundly depressed about the consequences of a second Bush term. Are you worried?

Everybody says that Bush is going to be more moderate. There’s not anything that’s happened since Election Day that proves to me that Bush is going to be moderate at all. He’s going to do exactly what he wants to do, without a voice of dissent. There’s not going to be anybody around George Bush who’s telling him anything that he doesn’t want to hear. That’s what I’m worried about.

On the National Guard story:

You made a decision during the campaign to go on television to talk about how President Bush got in the National Guard.

I made some remarks in Austin in a speech to John Kerry workers in March, a long time before 60 Minutes. Unbeknownst to me, when I told the story about feeling bad about the role that I had played in getting George Bush in the National Guard—the role I’d played in getting anybody in the National Guard, because a young man of 26 or 27 should not have that power—someone got it on video, and it went on a Kerry Web site. I did not do it for partisan reasons. The [Ann] Richards campaign had wanted me to say something in the governor’s race, when Bush was first running, but I very carefully did not say anything, and I did not say anything in Bush’s first presidential race. I didn’t feel comfortable saying something this time, but when I finally did, it wasn’t because George Bush was running against John Kerry. It was because I went to the Vietnam Memorial with two guests from England, and I was overcome by grief. Maybe I just hadn’t focused on it for a long time, but I had played a role. I supported President Johnson’s position on Vietnam, and 50,000 people died. I look back on it as a mistake this country made. And that’s why I said what I said. Sure, when I made the speech to the Kerry supporters, it was in a political environment, and I was making a political speech, so from that standpoint I was being political. But what I said was that I, Ben Barnes, am very sorry that I had that power and used that power.

Any regrets?

At dinner last night, some people said, “Well, we really hated to see you do that. And we know you’re probably sorry you did it.” I’m not sorry I did it. I feel very good for having done it. Not for political reasons. I feel good for having done it for me.

On the future of the Texas Democratic Party:

There is a tradition of Democrats solving these problems. If I had to describe our present state government, I’d say they’re not solving the problems—they’re managing the problems. If you’re going to rebuild the Democratic party, you have to offer a solution to these problems, and you have got to talk about it. The most discouraging thing about the races that have been run in Texas by Democrats in the past few years is that there hasn’t been enough debate about the issues. I don’t think we’ve gotten up into the faces of the people of Texas and said, “Let me tell you about health care. Let me tell you about transportation. Let me tell you about Robin Hood. Let me tell you about our rapid free fall in higher education.” Also, we have to remember that we are the party that creates a better standard of living and a better way of life and a better environment for the small-business person to make money and educate his children. We have to deliver the message that it can be done better and that our way is better. We can’t beat the Republicans by talking about what’s wrong with them. We have to talk about what’s right with us.

Posted by Byron LaMasters at December 17, 2004 12:37 PM | TrackBack