Those who oppose raising taxes are fond of pointing out that as fuel efficiency improves, gasoline “tax” revenue declines, because cars can go farther on a tank of gasoline than they used to. This is true. But other factors make up for this lost revenue. Texas’s population is growing rapidly, and more people means more cars and more cars means more gasoline sales, and more gasoline sales means more revenue. There is plenty of life left in the gasoline user fee.

The overriding political question is, How are we going to pay for roads? No one disputes that Texas needs a better road system and revenue to pay for it. At least five alternatives exist: (1) put more general revenue into highways; (2) issue bonds to borrow the money to build roads; (3) impose tolls; (4) sell concessions and privatize roads; (5) raise the gasoline tax and index it to inflation. Of these, (5) raising the gasoline tax, is the most logical and the least intrusive. Is it a “tax” increase? Only if you redefine a user fee as a tax. If a gasoline “tax” is a tax increase, then so are (4) tolls. They are the same thing: a payment you must make in order to use the roads.

Any solution that relies on requires general revenue is a bad idea, because it puts highways in competition with schools, health care, and law enforcement. Issuing bonds is no panacea, because the bondholders have to be paid, and what else are you going to pay them with other than general revenue?

TxDOT’s favored source of revenue has been concession payments. There may be situations in which concession payments are appropriate, but not in a case where control of the roads is surrendered to foreign corporations, far into the future, so that what we are really doing is shifting the tax burden to our children and grandchildren. Finally, we ought to question whether TxDOT should demand concession payments from local toll authorities in Houston the Metroplex, rather than having the revenue remain in a region subject to local control.

The place to start is by acknowledging that the gasoline tax is really a user fee. Then, maybe, we can actually have a discussion about how to solve our transportation problems without getting caught up in political sloganeering and ideology.

Tomorrow I’m going to make an exception. Harrison Keller, Tom Craddick’s education staffer, is running for the Austin Community College board of trustees. I have had the opportunity to work with Harrison on stories over the years, and I have found him to be intelligent, informed, and public-spirited. I don’t agree with him about everything, but he has always been up-front and square with me. He’s the kind of person who I would vote for without hestitation. I didn’t even know he was running until I got a robocall this afternoon. I will vote, and I hope he wins.

You get the idea. Absolutely nothing in this piece reached out to the public or its legislative critics to acknowledge TxDOT’s deficiencies–its lack of candor, its loss of credibility, its resistance to accountability, its air of arrogance, not to mention the widespread opposition to its determination to privatize highways.

I’m not going to prejudge Ms. Delisi (tempting as it may be). She has the intelligence and the knowledge to serve with distinction. The state needs for her to be successful. But the op-ed piece was not a good start. TxDOT has few friends in the Legislature and fewer still among the public at large. It has even alienated transportation interests in the Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth areas, which ought to be its strongest allies. The rule for judging the pronouncements of people whose job is to make policy is, “Don’t look at what they say, look at what they don’t say.” The failure to mend fences was a missed opportunity. It’s a characteristic of Perry’s inner circle. They don’t give an inch.

This propensity was evident from the text of the article. “[I]t is imperative that we have as many tools as possible to get the job done,” Delisi wrote, but later she added, “Our state must find new money to pay for roads and mass transit. It is difficult to imagine that the answer to our state’s transportation problems will be found in higher gas taxes….”

To repeat: Not a good start.

And apparently he is doing just that. I found this late-breaking report from the Washington Post online, posted at 10:50 EDT:

Gary Mayor Predicts Possible Indiana Shocker

Updated 11:12 p.m.

By Alec MacGillis
As the fate of a nailbiter Indiana primary — and possibly the course of the Democratic race — hung on his city, Gary Mayor Rudy Clay said just now that it might take a while yet to finish counting the vote in Lake County, which includes Gary, and said tonight his city had turned out so overwhelmingly for Barack Obama that it might just be enough to close the gap with Hillary Rodham Clinton.

“Let me tell you, when all the votes are counted, when Gary comes in, I think you’re looking at something for the world to see,” Clay, an Obama supporter, said in a telephone interview from Obama’s Gary headquarters. “I don’t know what the numbers are yet, but Gary has absolutely produced in large numbers for Obama here.”

Clay said the results were late coming in from Lake County because of the large numbers of absentee ballots that had to be counted — about 11,000. Under local practice, all of the cartridges from voting machines in Gary and nearby East Chicago are first collected at the local airport before being driven to the county headquarters to be tallied with the results from the rest of the county, he said. He said there were no major technical problems holding up the count.

“It takes a little time. We want to be sure that every vote is counted fair and right,” he said. “I just talked to the director out there and they are working like junkyard dogs to get that done as soon as possible. They are taking some time but I told them to do it right. That’s what taking the time.”

Gary, a predominantly African-American, post-industrial city, is considered a major stronghold for the Illinois senator, whose South Side Chicago home is just a short drive across the border. Smaller towns within Lake County are expected to break in a more balanced way between Obama and Clinton. In 2004, 188,000 voters turned out in Lake County, with 61 percent voting for John Kerry. Clay predicted that Clinton would win other towns in the county by narrow margins but that Obama would rack up huge totals in Gary, where he said some precincts reported only a handful of votes for Clinton. So closely was he following the local vote counting that he did not even know how close the statewide vote had gotten — a four percentage difference at 10:30.

In March, Clay predicted the race would come down to Gary, telling the Northwest Indiana and Illinois Times that tonight on CNN, “They are going to point at Indiana and say Hillary Clinton is leading by one point but Gary ain’t come in yet.”

Clay himself was deeply involved in get out the vote efforts this afternoon, going door to door to drum up anyone who hadn’t yet voted, he said. A volunteer in the Obama office in Gary said that canvassers who went out today found that in some neighborhoods almost everyone reported having already cast an absentee ballot.

“It was one of the biggest get out the vote campaigns I’ve seen,” Clay said. “It was the biggest get out the vote campaign ever in Gary for a presidential election.”

At this moment, 11:50 p.m., Clinton is clinging to a 17,000 vote lead over Obama with 99% of the vote in and Gary holding the balance. This is pretty scary stuff. Gary is, for all practical purposes, an extension of Chicago, and those Chicago boys know how to steal elections. Mayor Richard Daley may have stolen the 1960 election in Illinois from Richard Nixon on behalf of John F. Kennedy.

If Obama can pull out a win in Indiana in the wee hours, the Democratic presidential race is over.

Rasmussen Reports released this poll on Monday morning. After the numbers, the next line was, “It’s time to add United States Senator John Cornyn to the list of potentially vulnerable Republican incumbents in Election 2008.”

Can this poll be on the money? My first reaction was skepticism, for two reasons. One is that the last poll I heard about, soon after the Texas primary, had Cornyn up by something like 52-36. The other is a widespread perception, at least among self-annointed savants, that Noriega hasn’t got his act together. He hasn’t found a top-drawer person to handle his fundraising; he doesn’t have an effective campaign organization; he is a soporific speaker; he doesn’t see the big picture. He presents himself to audiences as Lieutenant Colonel Rick Noriega–that was the sign he used to identify himself in the Democratic primary debate back in February–and talks about the war and his efforts to help veterans. I wrote a column about his experience in Afghanistan, and the effect it had on him, so I am not devaluing the service he gave to his country. But this isn’t what people want to hear. They have made up their minds about the war, one way or another. People are worried about the economy, about health care, about what kind of future their children will have. I heard him speak at a legislative conference in New Braunfels, and he just put the audience to sleep. There was no fire, no broad themes, nothing that would move a person to vote for him. He has been running for the Senate for almost half a year now, and I haven’t heard any favorable buzz about him at all. All the talk has been about how he is underperforming.

To be fair, it is a huge leap from state representative to United States Senator. As a legislator, Noriega knew how to operate in floor debate. Tom Craddick regarded him as a bully, and that was a measure of grudging respect. But a state rep in the minority party is relegated to a few moments of action spread out over 140 days. It is hard to grow into a leader, and, in fact, Noriega didn’t do it. He was more of a designated hitter who went up to bat when his team needed him. Noriega was a leader in the military, but politics is a different situation. Nobody has to follow you.

Even so, I think that the poll is credible. Early polls often reflect not the loyalties of voters to candidates but the loyalty of voters to parties. Is it possible that the spread between the parties in Texas has narrowed to four or five points? I think it is. Republican numbers-crunchers continue to describe the spread as being in the neighborhood of 9%, but, as I wrote in Texas Monthly after the primary, I think that some realignment is taking place, both in Texas and nationally. I don’t think that Republicans are becoming Democrats overnight, but I do think that they are becoming more independent, if not yet ready to call themselves independents. Texas is not immune from national trends, and the wind is definitely blowing in the Democrats’ direction. Note the victories by Democrats in two special elections for congressional seats, those vacated by former House speaker Dennis Hastert (Illinois) and, last week, twenty-year GOP incumbent Richard Baker (Louisiana).

And let’s not forget those primary turnout numbers, when Democrats outvoted Republicans even in counties that have traditionally been rock-solid for the GOP. Overall the Democratic primary vote was twice that of Republicans. It is true that the D’s had a hot presidential race while the R’s did not, and it is also true that Democratic turnout was somewhat inflated, in the range of 7-8%, by Republicans crossing over to vote in the Democratic primary. Nevertheless, the Democratic turnout in Republican stronghold counties like Collin, Denton, Fort Bend, and Williamson was eye-opening. If Democrats can continue to be motivated into the fall, yes, I can see Noriega being very competitive in this race.

The big question for Democrats is always whether the Hispanic vote will finally reach the tipping point. Cornyn’s record on immigration and the border wall gives Noriega an opportunity to mobilize that vote. In recent years, though, it has been Republicans who have exceeded expectations; Bush won at least 40% of the Hispanic vote nationally in 2004, and an even bigger slice of the pie in Texas (thought to be around 44%). Noriega needs to push his share into the 70% range. His problem is that he is pro-choice, and this will cost him votes among Hispanic Catholics and evangelicals.

At the moment, the main importance of the poll is that Democratic strategists in Washington know that Noriega is mathematically competitive–and they know it early enough to be able to do something about it in terms of providing money and expertise and candidate training for his campaign. There is a lot of room for improvement.

Sunset Advisory Commission Vice Chair says he is a “NO” vote on Delisi

The following commentary about Governor Perry’s appointment of Deirdre Delisi as chair of the Texas Transportation Commission was just received from Senator Glenn Hegar’s office. The e-mail describes the piece as an “Op-Ed,” although it is not currently scheduled for publication, according to Hegar’s office.

Austin, Texas—On Wednesday, Texas Governor Rick Perry announced he had appointed Deirdre Delisi, his former Chief of Staff, as the new Chairman of the Texas Transportation Commission, which oversees the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT). As of today, I will not vote to confirm her appointment in the next Legislative session.

Ask almost any Texan, especially those who have the need to travel frequently on US Interstate Highway 35, about our Texas transportation system and they will tell you that many of our roads have extreme congestion, while other construction projects have experienced significant cost overruns. Last year, TxDOT notified the public that they had experienced a billion dollar accounting error, spent millions of dollars in an effort to persuade Texans that we need to pursue the proposed Tran-Texas Corridor even though the Legislature had just passed a two-year moratorium on public-private agreements.

Next legislative session will be a critical time as we work to ensure that TxDOT can once again gain the trust of Texans and to overcome the low opinion of what was once the most respected highway department in the nation.

In the Legislature, relations with TxDOT are also at an all-time low. Lawmaker’s questions and concerns about the Trans-Texas Corridor, the agency’s policies, funding schemes, budget, and construction priorities have oftentimes been met with contempt and disdain by TxDOT officials. The result is that many legislators, including myself, have lost confidence that TxDOT and its past policies are working in the best interests of Texas taxpayers.

That is why I had high hopes that Governor Rick Perry would use the vacancy created by the untimely passing of former Transportation Chair Ric Williamson as an opportunity to appoint someone to lead the commission who would work to change the status quo, reach out to lawmakers, and work cooperatively with the legislature to address the concerns of the citizens we represent. I view Ms. Delisi’s appointment as a squandered opportunity. It appears that rather than choose someone to head the commission who will reach out to lawmakers and work cooperatively with legislators, the governor instead has chosen a political “yes man” with little or no practical experience involving transportation issues other than carrying out the Governor’s myopic vision that relies solely on building more toll roads and selling our highway infrastructure to the highest bidder, usually a foreign owned company.

I currently serve as the Vice Chairman of the Texas Sunset Advisory Commission. In 1977, the Legislature created the Commission to identify and eliminate waste, duplication, and inefficiency in government agencies. The 12-member Commission is a legislative body that reviews the policies and programs of more than 150 government agencies every 12 years. The Commission questions the need for each agency, looks for potential duplication of other public services or programs, and considers new and innovative changes to improve each agency’s operations and activities. Currently, the Texas Department of Transportation is undergoing its 12-year Sunset review.

I also serve as a member of the Senate Nominations Committee, the committee who will have to vote to confirm Ms. Delisi’s appointment when the legislature reconvenes in January 2009. One might expect that the Governor and Ms. Delisi would have contacted all members of these key committees to discuss their plans to reform TxDOT in the Sunset process and to ask for our vote in the upcoming Nomination process. Unfortunately, like most of my colleagues, I learned about the appointment from the news media.

The Governor can certainly appoint anyone whom he sees fit, but as a State Senator who takes his constitutional “advise and consent” responsibilities seriously, I would have hoped Governor Perry would have sought out the advice of legislators before asking for our consent at this critical juncture in Texas history.

The Texas Department of Transportation’s vision statement says that the agency will work to: “Promote a higher quality of life through partnerships with the citizens of Texas and all branches of government by being receptive, responsible and cooperative.”

The Governor’s and Ms. Delisi’s recent actions with regard to this appointment are certainly not in keeping with that vision statement, but instead reflect a vision of non-cooperation and non-responsiveness to both lawmakers and the constituents they serve.

I certainly hope that Ms. Delisi will prove me wrong.

Likewise, I hope that between now and her Senate confirmation hearing next January she will attempt to change my perception that she will not be an agent of the status quo at TxDOT. If so, she may still have an opportunity to earn both my confidence and my vote, and the taxpayers of our state and those who use and depend on our vast transportation system will be well served.

Here is the release from Texas Watch. I will add more later.

Machiavelli, the first political consultant, wrote one of his most famous passages on the subject of fortune in politics:

For my part I consider that it is better to be adventurous than cautious, because fortune is a woman, and if you wish to keep her under it is necessary to beat and ill-use her; and it is seen that she allows herself to be mastered by the adventurous rather than by those who go to work more coldly.

Fortune favors the bold. The Obama campaign has allowed Clinton to seize the initiative while he has tried to stay above the fray. He has not fought back; he has allowed Clinton to question his electability when he could have been questioning hers. The world of sports really is analagous to the world of politics. The cliche that you have to play one game at a time is right. It is folly to adopt a post-convention unification strategy when the moment of peril is right now, in Indiana and North Carolina and Oregon. Clinton has no business being in this race. Her strategy was ruined the moment she lost Iowa. She’s running low on money. But she isn’t going away, and she will have her people in control of the convention.

I think Obama’s fundamental problem is that he lacks good political instincts. How could he fail to see that Jeremiah Wright was going to be a problem? How could he make that comment about the bitter people of rural Pennsylvania clinging “to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” How could he go bowling when he couldn’t even break 40? He has–maybe I should say “had”–a great message, but he lacks a feel for political combat.

Here’s what I posted two days after the Texas and Ohio primaries. (I have edited out a comment about Tom Craddick’s toughness for brevity’s sake):

The national media attribute her success to Roy Spence’s 3 a.m. ad, and I’m all for one of our own getting the credit, but I think Clinton’s success had less to do with her than with Obama. His performance level has dropped. He wasn’t on his game in the Texas debate, and he was downright bad in the Ohio debate. Maybe he has been sick–a correspondent pointed out that he was blowing his nose at the rally the night before the Texas debate–but I think he’s got a different kind of bug. He has begun to read his own press clippings and, worse, believe them. When I watched the Ohio debate, I could practically see him grow a glass jaw. Clinton hit him again and again, and he didn’t fight back. He let her bully him in the discussion over Louis Farrakhan’s endorsement. He said he renounced it and Clinton said he should reject it and he argued a while and finally said, “OK, I renounce it and reject it.” Weak!

Hillary has been running ads suggesting that she is stronger and would make the better commander-in-chief, and he played right into it. I think women got the message a lot more clearly than the message of the telephone ad: Hillary Clinton is tougher than Barack Obama. I feel as if I am watching a rerun of an old movie, starring Michael Dukakis, who wouldn’t fight back, co-starring John Kerry, who wouldn’t fight back. Only two people in America have more baggage than Hillary Clinton, and she’s married to one of them and trying to succeed the other. She hammers Obama for his dealings with Tony Rezko, but he can’t find a way to mention that her brother, Hugh Rodham, made $400,000 in fees for lobbying for presidential pardons, including one for fugitive financier Marc Rich, who gave $70,000 to her Senate campaign.

I’m afraid that Obama wants the love more than he wants the presidency. And Hillary knows it. She’s tougher.

Back to the present: The latest poll in Indiana, conducted by Indianapolis-based TeleResearch Corp. for a local TV station, has Clinton ahead by 10 points, 48% to 38%, outside the poll’s 3% margin of error. This is a tracking poll, and Clinton’s lead grew throughout the polling period in late April. Her lead was built on a shift of white men–no doubt the bitter sort, clinging to God and guns–to Clinton. In North Carolina, Clinton has trimmed Obama’s once double-digit lead to seven points, 51% to 44%, according to a Research 2000 poll. And in Oregon, with three weeks to go until the primary, Obama’s lead has dwindled to six points, 50% to 44%. One thing about politics: It can frustrate you, it can depress you, but it seldom bores you. In the short space of two months, we have seen Obama go from almost unbeatable to almost unelectable. He is running out the clock–on himself.

Would a DUI cause Perry to rethink the appointment? Probably not. The governor’s history has been that he does what he wants to do and doesn’t worry about the consequences. Krusee’s support for the Corridor will outweigh the short-term negatives of the DUI, but the long-term issue that the governor’s office has to consider is whether this was a one-time incident or a manifestation of a bigger problem. Another consideration is that Kirk Watson’s decision not to block the appointment of Deirdre Delisi, Perry’s former chief of staff, as chair of the Texas Highway Commission lessens the need for another cheerleader for privatized toll roads and comprehensive development agreements on the commission.

Delisi’s ascendancy will be greeted with intense skepticism by many senators, including Transportation chair John Carona, who told me, “She’s not qualified, she’s a political placeholder, and she has a horrid history of working with the Legislature. The governor couldn’t be sending a worse signal.” Nor is David Dewhurst a Delisi fan.

One Perry intimate suggested to me that Delisi is someone who has the ear of the governor and might, in a Nixon-goes-to-China sense, get him to modify his insistence on comprehensive development agreeements that privatize toll roads. That’s a lovely fairy tale, but it isn’t Perry’s style. Or Delisi’s.  

The battle over Delisi is just one of many fronts in the controversy over transportation policy. The decision to cut maintenance was a big news story, but it ultimately was not a major shift in policy. The embattled agency has around $28 billion to spend over the next decade of so, around $10+ billion of which is nondiscretionary spending. The real issue has been how to divide the remaining $17+ billion or so between new construction and maintenance. (To give you an idea of the extent of TxDOT’s problems, the real maintenance needs over the next decade or so are over $20 billion.) The decision is to spend $12.5 billion on maintenance and $4.5 billion on new capacity–that is, new roads and new lanes on existing roads. The $12.5 billion on maintenance represents a reduction of around $350 million a year that will be shifted to new construction. TxDOT currently claims that 87% of its roads are in “good or better” condition, a figure that will fall to 80% under the new spending pattern. The Dallas Morning News story about the decision said that pavement conditions on one in five Texas roads would be substandard by the end of the planning period. This is mathematically correct, but it is not necessarily an accurate forecast. A transportation lobbyist who is familiar with the process told me that characterizing road conditions is more art than science.

The Legislature’s primary push has been for TxDOT to start issuing bonds for road construction that were authorized by a constitutional amendment, which the voters approved in 2007. So far, TxDOT has been slow to respond, which has not exactly endeared TxDOT to legislative policy makers (not that TxDOT has many friends in the Capitol anyway).

Another problem for the agency is that it is currently up for Sunset review, and the staff report will probably come out in late May. The early word is that Perry wants the Sunset bill to be narrowly drawn and not get into the big issues, such as how to finance toll roads. If these issues are part of the Sunset bill, and they do not come out to the governor’s liking, he would have to veto the bill–but it’s not easy to veto a Sunset bill, because Sunset bills have to pass, or the agency ceases to exist. All indications are that Sunset chairman Carl Isett is on board with the governor and is not seen as a change agent. This is disappointing, because Isett certainly has the intelligence to take on the reform of TxDOT but apparently not the will.

In addition to Sunset, another challenge is looming. In 2009, the  moratorium expires–but so does the authority for comprehensive development agreements. The Legislature will have to deal with these issues. And it will also have to deal with the primacy issue, whether local toll authorities will have the authority to make the decision about financing their projects without having to get the blessing of TxDOT. Finally, there is the issue of funding. If the Legislature would raise the gasoline tax (or give metro areas the authority to raise it) and index it to inflation, the need for CDAs would be greatly reduced, and the control of toll roads would remain in the public sector. Chairman Delisi is going to have a busy time.

First, however, Moyers and Wright talked about the history of the African-American experience regarding Christianity. Wright argues that the missionaries brought a version of Christianity that was white and European and outside the black experience. This discussion begins:

BILL MOYERS: So, when Trinity Church says it is unashamedly black and unapologetically Christian, is it embracing a race-based theology?

REVEREND WRIGHT: No, it is not. It is embracing Christianity without giving up Africanity. A lotta the missionaries were going to other countries assuming that our culture is superior, that you have no culture. And to be a Christian, you must be like us. Right now, you can go to Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, and see Christians in 140-degree weather. They have to have on a tie. Because that’s what it means to be a Christian. Well, it’s that kind of assuming that our culture, “We have the only sacred music. You must sing our music. You must use a pipe organ. You cannot use your instrument.” It’s that kind of assumption that in the field of missions, people say, “You know what? We’re doing this wrong. We need to take Christ and leave culture at home. We need to learn the culture of people into which we’re moving, and preach the methods of Jesus Christ using the culture that we are a part of.” Well, the same thing happened with Christians in this country when they said, “You know what? Because those same missionaries who went south, they didn’t let us sing gospel music.” That was not sacred–

BILL MOYERS: They were singin’ the great Anglican hymns.

REVEREND WRIGHT: Correct, correct. And make sure you use correct diction. Well, the– Africans in the late– African-Americans in the late ’60s started saying, “You know, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.” Even– I was in Virginia Union, I was soloist at Virginia Union in the college, in the concert choir. We were not allowed to sing anything but anthems and spirituals. The same thing with the Howard University concert choir. The same thing with all the historical black choirs until ‘68. When King got killed, black kids started saying wait a minute. We’re not givin’ up who we are as black people to become– to show somebody else that we — in fact, the music majors at Howard when I was– teaching assistant at La Vern they said to the choir director there, “We’re tired of singin’ German Lieder and Italian aria to prove to you that we– you know, we can sing foreign songs. But we have our own music tradition.” Prior to ‘68, there was no gospel music at Howard University. Prior to ‘68, there was no jazz major. The white universities are giving Count Basie and Duke Ellington degrees. We don’t even the jazz course. We don’t have blues. We don’t have any of our music on this black college campus. Because the missionaries had not allowed us to teach our own music.

And at that point in history, all across the country and all across denominational lines, the– the college-age kids started saying, no more. No mas. Nada mas. We’re gonna do our people. We’re gonna do our culture. We’re gonna do our history. And we’re gonna embrace it and not put– to say one is superior to the other. Because we are different. And different does not mean deficient, that we just different like snowflakes. We’re different. We talk about God of diversity? God has diverse culture, God has -and we’re proud of who we are because that’s the statement the congregation was making, not a race-based theology. [end of excerpt]

As Moyers points out later in the interview, this approach to Christianity has a name: black liberation theology. It is the interpretation of Scripture from the viewpoint of the oppressed. Moyers says, “As I understand it, black liberation theology reads the bible through the experience of people who have suffered, and who then are able to say to themselves that we read the bible differently, because we have struggled, than those do who have not struggled. Is that a fair bumper sticker of liberation theology?” Wright says it is. Moyers goes on to point out that this is the essentially the Jewish story, and Wright agrees. Having just been through Passover, I know this is true. The Exodus is liberation theology: If any man is in bondage, I am in bondage.

The common lament of those who feel abused by the media when their remarks become sound bites is that their words have been taken out of context, and Jeremiah Wright is no exception. But he may have a point. We see and hear him saying things that most of us, including me, find totally reprehensible, and we can’t understand why he would say them. They make no sense in a political context. But he isn’t a politician; he is a theologian, and in the context of black liberation theology, his words are understood by his parishoners in a different way than we hear them. This is a defense of Jeremiah Wright, but it is not a defense of Barack Obama, who is a politician and thus is charged with knowing how these words will be understood in a political context.

The discussion of the “God damn America” sermon comes next:

BILL MOYERS: One of the most controversial sermons that you preach is the sermon you preach that ended up being that sound bite about Goddamn America.

REVEREND JEREMIAH WRIGHT: Where governments lie, God does not lie. Where governments change, God does not change. And I’m through now. But let me leave you with one more thing. Governments fail. The government in this text comprised of Caesar, Cornelius, Pontius Pilate - the Roman government failed. The British government used to rule from East to West. The British government had a Union Jack. She colonized Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Hong Kong. Her navies ruled the seven seas all the way down to the tip of Argentina in the Falklands, but the British government failed. The Russian government failed. The Japanese government failed. The German government failed. And the United States of America government, when it came to treating her citizens of Indian descent fairly, she failed. She put them on reservations. When it came to treating her citizens of Japanese descent fairly, she failed. She put them in internment prison camps. When it came to treating citizens of African descent fairly, America failed. She put them in chains. The government put them on slave quarters, put them on auction blocks, put them in cotton fields, put them in inferior schools, put them in substandard housing, put them in scientific experiments, put them in the lowest paying jobs, put them outside the equal protection of the law, kept them out of their racist bastions of higher education and locked them into position of hopelessness and helplessness. The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law, and then wants us to sing God bless America? No, no, no. Not God bless America; God damn America! That’s in the Bible, for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating her citizen as less than human. God damn America as long as she keeps trying to act like she is God and she is supreme!

BILL MOYERS: What did you mean when you said that?

REVEREND WRIGHT: When you start confusing God and government, your allegiances to government -a particular government and not to God, that you’re in serious trouble because governments fail people. And governments change. And governments lie. And those three points of the sermon. And that is the context in which I was illustrating how the governments biblically and the governments since biblical times, up to our time, changed, how they failed, and how they lie. And when we start talking about my government right or wrong, I don’t think that goes. That is consistent with what the will of God says or the word of God says that governments don’t say right or wrong. That governments that wanna kill innocents are not consistent with the will of God. And that you are made in the image of God, you’re not made in the image of any particular government. We have the freedom here in this country to talk about that publicly, whereas some other places, you’re dead if say the wrong thing about your government.

BILL MOYERS: Well, you can be almost crucified for saying what you’ve said here in this country.

REVEREND WRIGHT: That’s true. That’s true. But you can be crucified, you can be crucified publicly, you can be crucified by corporate-owned media. But I mean, what I just meant was, you can be killed in other countries by the government for saying that. Dr. King, of course, was vilified. And most of us forget that after he was assassinated, but the year before he was assassinated, April 4th, 1967 at the Riverside Church, he talked about racism, militarism and capitalism. He became vilified. He got ostracized not only by the majority of Americans in the press; he got vilified by his own community. They thought he had overstepped his bounds. He was no longer talking about civil rights and being able to sit down at lunch counters that he should not talk about things like the war in Vietnam. He preached–

BILL MOYERS: Lyndon Johnson was furious at that. As you know-

REVEREND WRIGHT: I’m sure he was.

BILL MOYERS: That’s where they broke.

REVEREND WRIGHT: And that’s where a lot of the African-American community broke with him, too. He was vilified by Roger Wilkins’ daddy, Roy Wilkins. Jackie Robinson. He was vilified by all of the Negro leaders who felt he’d overstepped his bounds talking about an unjust war. And that part of King is not lifted up every year on January 15th. 1963, “I have a dream,” was lifted up, and passages from that - sound bites if you will - from that march on Washington speech. But the King who preached the end of- “I’ve been to the mountaintop, I’ve looked over and I’ve seen the Promised Land, I might not get there with you,”- that part of the speech is talked about, not the fact that he was in Memphis siding with garbage collectors. Nothing about Resurrection City, nothing about the poor–

BILL MOYERS: Resurrection City was the march in Washington for the poor.

REVEREND WRIGHT: For the poor. That part of King is not talked about because we want to keep that away from the public eye, and the public memory, and it’s been 40 years now.

* * * * *

Near the end of the program, Moyers raises the subject of Wright’s support for Louis Farrakhan:

BILL MOYERS: But even some of your admirers say it would be wrong to gloss over what Martin Marty himself called- who loves you- called your “abrasive edges.” For example, you know, Louis Farrakhan lives in the south part of Chicago, doesn’t he? You’ve had a long complicated relationship with him, right?

REVEREND WRIGHT: Yes.

BILL MOYERS: And he, you know, he’s expressed racist and anti-Semitic remarks. And, yet, last year-

REVEREND WRIGHT: Twenty years ago.

BILL MOYERS: Twenty years ago, but that’s indefensible.

REVEREND WRIGHT: The Nation of Islam and Mr. Farrakhan have more African-American men off of drugs. More African-American men respecting themselves. More African-American men working for a living. Not gang banging. Not trying to get by. That’s not indefensible in terms of how you make a difference in the prisons? Turning people’s lives around. Giving people hope. Getting people off drugs. That we don’t believe the same things in terms of our specific faiths. He’s Muslim, I’m Christian. We don’t believe the same things he said years ago. But that has nothing to do with what he has done in terms of helping people change their lives for the better. I said direct quote was what? “Louis Farrakhan is like E.F. Hutton. When Lewis Farrakhan speaks, black America listens.” They may not agree with him, but they’re listening.

* * * * *

One of the significant moments in this interview comes when Wright says, “We have the freedom here in this country to talk about that [criticizing the government] publicly, whereas some other places, you’re dead if say the wrong thing about your government.” Moyers responds, “Well, you can almost be crucified for saying what you’ve said in this country.” And Wright responds–I’m paraphrasing here–no, no, I was speaking metaphorically about getting killed, you can be crucified in the way the media crucifies people, but you can REALLY be killed in a lot of other countries. That doesn’t sound like somebody who is anti-American to me, and, of course, we know about Wright’s record of service in the Marine Corps. There is a lot more to him than what we see on You Tube saying, “God damn America.” And some of his observations really hit home. Yes, Martin Luther King was a national hero when he wrote “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and when he gave his “I Have a Dream” speech, but I had forgotten that public opinion had turned against him when he criticized the war in Viet Nam and raised protests against conditions in urban areas such as Detroit, Chicago, and Memphis. He had, as the saying goes, “quit preaching and gone to meddling.”

After I first saw the film clips of Jeremiah Wright saying, “God damn America,” I thought Obama should have left the church as soon as he heard them. While I still find the words reprehensible, I no longer think that Jeremiah Wright hates his country. But the sound bite is so powerful that it drowns out any discussion of context, as was discussed by Moyers and Wright. And that is bad for the democratic process.

Able and ambitious, she gravitated to politics as soon as she arrived at UT-Austin in 1976. She joined the Young Democrats and the Texas Women’s Political Caucus; she worked an a legislative aide; she became statewide youth coordinator for John Hill’s ill-fated 1978 gubernatorial campaign. In her junior year, she won the presidency of the statewide Young Democrats. She accumulated enough credit hours to graduate but not all the required courses, and so she never earned a degree. She was, she said later, in a hurry to start earning a living in politics. In 1984 she won an Austin legislative seat, and she served on the State Affairs committee, where chairman Pete Laney noticed her abilities and instructed her in the legislative arts. She also struck up another valuable friendship, this one with state treasurer Ann Richards.

In 1991, newly elected Governor Richards made Guerrero the symbol of her theme of a “New Texas” by naming her to fill a vacancy on the Railroad Commission that was created when John Sharp was elected comptroller. She was the first Hispanic woman to hold statewide office. By all accounts, she was an outstanding commissioner; she even charmed James Nugent, the panel’s irascible chairman. She knew next to nothing about the oil and gas and trucking industries, which were the regulatory responsibilities of the commission, and she set out to remedy that deficiency by visiting oil fields and loading docks and outlying commission field offices around the state. From all accounts at the time, she was a conscientious public official who actually read the briefs of the matters before the commissions. Guerrero was on her way to reelection in 1992 when Republicans learned that two claims on her biography: were false: that she had earned a Bachelor of Science degree in broadcasting from UT and had been elected to Phi Beta Kappa, the society that honors outstanding academic achievement. These misstatements dated back to her first legislative race in the eighties. The revelation led to a two-week media feeding frenzy, the sordid details of which, out of respect to the departed, will not be recounted here. Guerrero chose to resign her seat and remain in the race for the next term, but she lost to Republican Barry Williamson, 53.65% to 39.26%.

The episode marked a turning point in the Richards’ governorship. Richards didn’t have a big legislative agenda, but she did care about her vision of a “New Texas” in which blacks and Hispanics and women, who as Richards saw it, had historically been passed over for gubernatorial appointments, would have the opportunity to show that they could govern the state as well as they old-boy network. Guerrero was central to this vision, but when her lies were exposed, her political career was over. Richards was devastated. I don’t think she ever recovered from the disappointment. It wasn’t the political setback that bothered Richards. It was that her protege had undermined her vision of the future of the state. A few months after the election, I had an interview with Richards about the sunset process in state government, which she felt had become a bonanza for lobbyists. Afterward, I said to her, “Governor, you don’t seem to be enjoying yourself as much this legislative session”–it was April 1993–”as you did two years ago.” I’ll never forget her answer: “If you mean, am I sadder but wiser, the answer is yes.” That is what Guerrero’s failure to tell the truth (even to Richards’ face, when confronted about it) did to Richards’ morale. I think it had a lot to do with Richards’ disprited performance in the 1994 governor’s race against George W. Bush.

The great mystery is why Guerrero felt she had to fabricate her background. The daughter of migrant farmworkers (and she herself had worked in the fields, according to her biography), she could have said that she attended UT for four years but left before getting a degree to run for the Legislature. She certainly didn’t have to invent her membership in Phi Beta Kappa. Most of her constituents wouldn’t have known what it signified anyway. Something inside whispered to her that what she was, wasn’t enough, and so she made up the rest.

If Guerrero had not been tripped up by her falsified biography, she would have been a heavy favorite to defeat Williamson in the general election. When Lloyd Bentsen gave up his U.S. Senate seat to become Bill Clinton’s Secretary of the Treasury, Richards might well have tapped Guerrero to replace him. Guerrero would have had to run in a special election to serve the remainder of Bentsen’s term, and she probably would have faced Kay Bailey Hutchison in a runoff. Hutchison held the obscure office of state treasurer and was not yet the popular figure she is today. It is not too far-fetched to imagine that Guerrero could have won that race. But Guerrero was out of the picture, and Richards’ choice of Bob Krueger, another member of the Railroad Commission, was not inspired.

In the late eighties, Texas produced three promising Hispanic politicians who were statewide figures. One was San Antonio mayor Henry Cisneros. One was Dan Morales, elected attorney general in 1990. One was Lena Guerrero. All of them self-destructed: Cisneros by having a very public affair, Morales by turning out to be a crook, Guerrero by lying about her credentials. That was a great loss for the Democratic party and for Texas. Their collective implosions, along with Tony Sanchez’s unsuccessful governor’s race, have made it difficult for any Hispanic Democrat to run statewide. No one of that stature has emerged since. The Republicans produced Tony Garza, but he seems unlikely to pursue electoral politics after his stint as ambassador to Mexico ends.

After her defeat, she went to see Gene Fondren, the dean of the business lobby, for advice about becoming a lobbyist. Instead of getting advice, she got hired. She worked successfully for four sessions and had put her life back together when, at 43, she was diagnosed in 2000 with an inoperable malignant brain tumor. Patricia Kilday Hart wrote a story about Guerrero’s battle with cancer in the September 2001 issue. “Doctors can’t give her a definitive prognosis,” Hart wrote, and she went on to quote Guerrero: “They all say the same thing—nobody knows. Some people live for a long time, some for a short time. If I get five more years, I’ll get to see [her thirteen-year-old son] Leo Junior graduate [from high school]. If you gave me twenty, then I might get to meet the grandchildren.” She got nine–more than enough to win back her reputation as a hard worker and a superb political strategist. As for the question of why she falsified her academic credentials, even Guerrero seemed mystified. “It was stupid on my part,” she told Hart. “I still don’t know why I did it.”

Lena Guerrero is survived by her husband, Leo Aguirre, and her son, Leo Jr.

He began by talking about troop strength. The chief of staff of the army said we needed several hundred thousand troops. This was contradicted by civilians in the Pentagon (Rumsfeld, I presume). “It is clear now we were far, far short” of the necessary troop strength. It was a serious misjudgment.” The Army’s new insurgency manual says we need 1 soldier for each 20 residents. We had 170,000 troops when we needed half a million. Then he made the comment that is the headline of this post, followed by, “The effort was held together with string.”

One example was the town of Bahuba, which was a very dangerous area near Baghdad. It had a population of 150,000. Under the Petraeus insurgency model, we would have needed three to four thousand troops to hold the area. ONE COMPANY (around 150 troops) had responsibility. They had an outpost which was a burned out building. That was the only thing they controlled. There was a hellacious battle here. Dozens of guerrillas tried to overrun the outpost. The Americans fired their machine guns until the barrels glowed cherry red. It was winter, and it was so cold that men gathered to be warmed by the turbine of a tank.

An outpost in another area was known as “Disneyland.” It was attacked by sniper fire. The troops couldn’t go after the sniper because they had to wait for the Iraq troops, who weren’t ready to go. “I asked an Iraqi, ‘What happens if America leaves?’” The answer was, twenty minutes after the Americans left, we’d leave. They’d surround us and kill us all. (Part of this story was Oppel’s chilling account of how he and a photographer went in search of the sniper, drawing enemy fire from two directions.)

As recently as a year ago, we still were deployed with too few troops. “We literally controlled nothing for miles around except the outpost.” You couldn’t talk to unit commanders without their breaking down and crying over the men they lost. General Petraeus was in Mosul with the 101st Airborne. When he left, he was replaced with a unit 1/4 the size.

On the surge: Most of the surge troops went to Baghdad. The aim was to allow breathing room for the political process to work. There has been some halting progress. A bill passed to allow provincial elections, but it was vetoed. Another bill allowed Baathists back in the government, but the effect may be to force more Sunnis out of the government. An American official told Oppel that there is not nearly as much progress as he had hoped there would be.

Some good news: Violence is down in Baghdad (but not in Basra or Mosul). In the capital, the markets are coming back, also clothing stores, restaurants, people are less afraid to venture out. But already the violence is starting to increase. April is the worst death toll since September.

Four things contributed to the decline of violence: 1. Shiites won Baghdad. They eliminated many of the Sunnis through ethnic cleansing. 2. Sadr’s cease-fire. He represents the Nativist Iraqi, the poor, which would be a strong factor even without him. 3. We have Sunni guerrillas (”concerned local citizens”) on our payroll. They joined our side because they needed money and feared the Shiite leaders. But they also reject American occupation. Most are not motivated by religion or jihad. This has made an amazing difference in Anbar province. But it may not be due to troop surge; it may be the policy of paying the Sunnis.

Where to from here?

1. Wait out the clock. Let a new president figure out what to do.

2. There are competing arguments for staying and leaving.

–For staying: America has a moral responsibility. We broke this country and unleashed terrific forces. Second argument: American troops on the ground helps contain Iran. Iran would like to see breakaway Shia state in southern Iraq. By staying, we give Iraqis time to address security.

–For leaving: 1. We’re draining manpower from other assignments (Afghanistan). 2. The Iraqis won’t do anything until we leave. 3. Very high toll on our troops. 4. Iraqis will never reconcile themselves to an American occupation. At least the Sunnis have warmed to the realization that Iran is the greater enemy

There are two perilous situations for the U.S. One is in Basra. Iraqi forces are trying to rid Basra of criminals. U.S. is helping. The other take on this is that Maliki is trying to weaken Sadr, taking sides in an Iraqi civil war. The Sadr cease fire helped us immensely. The American military knows what Sadr can do to them. They refer to him as “Salid,” a descendant of Muhammad. But Sec. of State Rice was contemptuous of him. We’re on the same side as the Iranians, we want Sadr put down. The Iski party (Shiite) wants a separate Shia area in the south. This is what Iran wants too.

The Sunnis are not at all reconciled with the government. From a U.S. perspective, the Sunni insurgents are a much less alien force than the Shia.

There is no easy decision. Every decision will lead to great consequences.

This was the end of Oppel’s remarks. He avoided drawing any conclusions about whether we are “winning” or “losing” the war. Nor was he critical of U.S. policy, except for the initial decision about troop levels. He also said that the big winner (my words, not his) in the war has been Iran. We gave Iran a free hand to operate in Iraq. In the question and answer that followed, I asked whether U.S. policy had identifiable objectives, or whether it was simply ad hoc, and, if it did have definable objectives, were those objectives achievable. His answer was that it was the responsibility of the president to lay out a clear strategy. He cited a McCain adviser (Foresman) as being very critical of the generals’ testimony before Congress and Bush’s continuing insistence that the war was going well. Quoting the adviser, he said, “The American people deserve better than presidential bluster.”

What I drew from Oppel’s presentation was that Iraq is an incredibly complex issue. There are factions within factions. The Shia, who we put in power because the Sunnis were aligned with the Baathists and Saddam, have gone on a killing rampage against the Sunnis. Even so, there is more good will than you would think; Shia families have hidden Sunni neighbors from the death squads. Oppel clearly believes that we are doing the smart thing by coming to the aid of the Sunnis, but he also questioned whether this was something that could last very long. Nothing that he said could support the idea that we have turned the corner in Iraq, or that the surge is working in any meaningful way.

Here is my question: Why is he running? Is there any impulse other than self-gratification? At the very least, the people of Texas deserve some indication of what he hopes to accomplish as governor for life. This announcement was an insult to the state. There was no gravitas to it. The episode captured what drives Perryphobes crazy. His ambition is without substance. It consists only of the desire to hold office and exercise power. Never mind that the question, “To what end?” has no answer, other than to reward his friends and draw pleasure from the misery of his critics.

Some Hutchison supporters are already saying that this move is just another part of Perry’s strategy to avoid lame-duck status in 2009. His plan, they suggest, is to submit his proposals to the 81st Legislature and, if they are enacted, say that he has accomplished everything that he wanted to, and ride off into the sunset. There are two things wrong with this interpretation: (1) If all you want to do is avoid lame duck status, you can just play coy. You don’t have to announce for reelection, least of all in a haphazard manner. (2) Perry doesn’t work the Legislature and has never gotten engaged in a regular session, so he doesn’t end up with a lot of accomplishments. He announces some proposals in his State of the State speech at the beginning of the session. Then he disappears until mid-May, reemerges to make demands, and threaten vetoes if he doesn’t get his way. The Legislature gets in a tizzy, caves in on a few things, and goes home. The governor vetoes bills of members who got in his way and disappears again, until the cycle starts anew. What the governor really enjoys about his job is that he is the most powerful governor ever, because he runs state government, top to bottom, through his former staffers and allies whom he appoints to major boards.

At this point in my writing, I received a call from a friendly intermediary with good contacts in the Perry camp. This was the message: (1) The governor did not intend for this to be a real announcement for reelection. He would not have announced his intentions in this way. (2) He isn’t prepared to run for reelection at the present time. He doesn’t have an agenda yet for the next legislative session. (3) His closest advisers are split on whether he should run again. (4) Please convey this to Burka before he starts hyperventilating. (Too late. EMS is on the way.)

So I guess I am supposed to believe that this was an amateurish mistake by a supreme political pro. I’m not buying it. I remember that in 1998, when Perry was running against John Sharp for lieutenant governor, he told me, “I’m going to win because I’m more disciplined than he is.” And he was, and he did. Sharp blinked in the end game, taking a successful anti-Perry ad off the air, and Perry won. Rick Perry has built a career out of of being disciplined. He is a great campaigner because he knows how to follow a game plan and stay on message. He has also built a career out of getting into Kay Bailey Hutchison’s head. That’s what this was all about. Throw her off stride. Perry knows what the score is: He can’t win if she runs, so his only chance is to get in her head and drive her out of the race.

I called Hutchison’s office immediately but the line was busy for around 20 minutes–and there are a lot of lines. When I did get through, I was told, not as an official statement, and not for attribution, that this “doesn’t affect anything,” that what the senator has said previously still goes, that she will make up her own mind independent of anything else. I have previously heard from Hutchison’s camp that the terrain is different in 2008 than it was in 2006, when she opted not to run. The political cycle is different (the election occurs in the middle of her term, not at the end of her term, as was the case in 2006); the strength of the incumbent is not what it used to be; and the Republican party, which has to confront a reviving Democratic party, is likely to look more favorably on her candidacy in 2010 than it did in 2006, when the spectre of a divisive primary fight threatened to weaken the winner. Now the party needs Hutchison’s star power.

Hutchison’s office also issued an official statement, which I did not receive but am poaching from the Quorum Report:

I am encouraged by the growing number of Texans asking me to return home to run for Governor to provide leadership for our state. It is too early to make an announcement about the 2010 race. Right now I remain committed to serving the people of Texas in the United States Senate and helping our Republican candidates win crucial elections this fall.

The local news programs have been full of Perry’s announcement. The governor’s Web site does not refer to it at all.

I have written previously that I don’t think that Perry can successfully face the voters again. His support is limited to the Republican base and isn’t even solid there, due to discontent over his hostility to the border fence, his support for the margins tax, and his unflinching advocacy for the Trans-Texas Corridor. And don’t forget his losing battle for mandatory HPV vaccinations. While I have not seen any recent polling, Hutchison has a history of polling better than Perry among every group of GOP primary voters, including strong pro-life voters. I believe Hutchison would defeat Perry in a GOP primary by at least 55-45, and I think that margin is slightly on the conservative side. Dewhurst wants to be governor, and he has done oppo research into Hutchison’s voting record, but he is too much of a Republican establishment member to mount a primary challenge against Perry or Hutchison, which party leaders (translation: the big donors) don’t want. If Hutchison gets into the governor’s race, I expect Dewhurst to run for reelection.

Earlier this week, on a trip to Houston, I met with a prominent local Republican officeholder who told me that Hutchison will announce for governor in early June 2009. This is fourteen months, including a legislative session, in the future. How many other stunts like this will Perry pull in an effort to nudge Hutchison out of the race. Today’s announcement confirms what we have been hearing, and I have been writing, for several weeks: Perry wants to run again. But he can’t beat Hutchison–unless she doesn’t run.

I don’t think he can beat a strong Democratic candidate either. The options for the D’s include Bill White, Paul Hobby, Lance Armstrong, and … ? I don’t include John Sharp here, although he was a first-rate public servant, because he has lost two statewide races, and I think he would run into trouble in a primary for having helped Perry develop and pass the business margins tax. If he wanted the nomination, Henry Cisneros would be a viable candidate (twenty years have passed since his youthful indiscretions), but, then or now, I have never seen any indication that he wanted it. Almost anyone on this list (I’m excluding Sharp) could beat Perry, but I don’t think any of them could beat Hutchison.