A MUST READ>......................IF IT WORKS: Gore Could Learn from Bush's Victory over
Ann Richards
Running on the 1994 Strategy
P. M. Carpenter is a frequent contributor to TomPaine.com.
This year's presidential race between George W. Bush and Al Gore could be
said to have eerily similar overtones to the 1994 Texas gubernatorial race between George
W. Bush and incumbent Ann Richards. Six years ago Richards enjoyed reasonably high
approval ratings, yet according to polls right up to election day the race remained quite
close. Like Gore, Richards raised doubts about W.'s competence, but did so tepidly and
with nothing like the memorable vitriol she poured on his father at the 1988 Democratic
National Convention. And in their only debate -- according to coverage by the Atlanta
Constitution -- "everybody was nice-nice."
In her light charge of the brigade during the debate, Richards advanced with two mild
critiques. She first admonished W., "You have got to have some experience in the public
sector before you can have the chief executive's job." Second, Richards claimed that
proposals made by W. during the campaign would cost the state of Texas several billion
additional dollars -- $17 billion to be precise. To these observations W. responded with the
usual generalities: "The fact that I haven't held public office gives me the freedom to think
differently," said W. The charge of budget contortions he dismissed as "just old-style
politics."
Is all this sounding weirdly familiar so far? If so, given what Richards predicted and how
W. defended, how did things play out over the next five years?
The most telling, indisputable fact is that spending did not rise $17 billion, as Richards
foretold. It rose $25.3 billion, from the two-year budget of 1994-1995 to that of 2000-2001.
Indeed, the level at which the state budget "swelled" -- as the Houston Chronicle put it --
in these five years prompted an erstwhile Texas Republican Party fund raiser, David
Hartman, to declare that it was "irresponsible by conservative standards." Steve "Hope,
Growth, and Opportunity" Forbes was inspired enough during the primaries to denounce
W.'s budget as having surpassed in growth even Bill Clinton's (and that's about the
nastiest thing one Republican can say to another), but the most damning assessment
came from the Texas Taxpayers and Research Association -- "an influential business
group," according to the Chronicle. Bill Allaway, the association's president, said that
while he had no "major complaints" about W.'s spending, he added, oddly, that "Texas
just authorized spending a record amount in 2000-01, set aside nothing for future rainy
days and overshot the largest 'surplus' in the state's history by almost one-half billion
dollars." Well, at least he had no major complaints.
Of course, much of the increased spending was the result of W.'s administrative emphasis
on education, but the prediction of an increase was precisely what W. had smugly
ridiculed as nothing more than "old-style politics." Surrounded by advisors he surely knew
the costs of educational initiatives -- even sorely needed ones -- would add up, but he
refused to be straightforward with voters. Still, even with the additional spending that
indeed materialized, W.'s record is muddled at best.
As the San Diego Union-Tribune reported in 1999, there are "some education realities that
[Bush] dares not draw attention to." Those include the realities that "educators say the
[higher test] scores probably reflect reforms put in place before he became governor," and
that "though Bush boasts that Texas raised teacher pay ... Democrats and educators say
they had to fight him to win it." Said Louis Malfaro of Education Austin: "Our biggest
opponent [regarding the pay raise] was Governor Bush."
Even more problems arose from W.'s push his first year in office to open charter schools --
his version of "educational entrepreneurship." It's not that the concept of charter schools is
a bad one, said critics. But W. and Republican legislators, because of ill-advised haste,
were sloppy in requiring safeguards. As a result, some charter schools in 1999 were
"under investigation for financial failures, fund misappropriation, forgery and failure to
administer state-required tests," according to the Union-Tribune. And, "We can see some
patterns developing ... with all the charters," said Brooks Flemister, senior director for
Texas's charter schools.
What's more, though W. certainly was liberal with spending (made possible by a booming
national economy) on publicly funded charter schools, he was far less enthusiastic when
it came to spending money on older public schools -- and that lack of enthusiasm
originated with his goal of a counterproductive tax cut. "He had the choice of spending [the
state budget surplus] on education or giving a bigger tax cut, and his guys were all
working for the tax cut," said a legislative director for a senior Democratic state senator.
You know, one of those Democrats that W. works so famously well with.
The lesson is that against W.'s homey and euphoric proclamations of citizen-legislator
generalities, nice guys finish last. Just ask Ann Richards. She failed to insist on a clearly
defined vision from her opponent. W., in short, first bamboozled voters by scoffing at the
charge of a soaring budget, then "authorized spending a record amount," then permitted
problems to mushroom through lack of competent supervision, then contradictorily blew a
surplus generated by good economic times on a questionable tax cut, rather than going
the distance and shoring up public schools. Gore, in short, needs to toughen his resolve
in getting clear answers, unlike Richards. He needs to forget being Mr. Nice Guy, and he
needs to do it damned fast. |
