My Choice for Lieutenant Governor - Jerry Patterson

This column originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics:

Even as we start voting in important local and constitutional elections, the 2014 primaries are barreling toward us. This is especially true of the race for the Republican nomination for Lieutenant Governor. Because the train of this race has left the station and already seems at times to be on a course that could derail the entire Republican ticket next fall, people who care deeply about the future of our party and this State must start to express their preferences in order to try to avoid such a derailment.

It is in this spirit that I have decided to make my endorsement for Lieutenant Governor now, and to explain the basis for it.

Before I do so, though, I want to make a few preliminary points:

1. All four men running for the GOP nomination are competent to run the Texas Senate based on their experiences of serving in, or running the Senate. Moreover, at least three of these men have the temperament required to manage the Senate. If any of the three men who have both the competence and temperament to be Lieutenant Governor win the primary, I promise to actively support that candidate next fall; if the fourth candidate wins the primary, I will support the Republican ticket, but I will take no active role in support of that candidate.

2. My normal rule for primary races involving an incumbent is that the challenger bears the burden to prove to voters that he or she is not only competent to serve in the office, but also that the incumbent does not deserve re-election and the challenger would be the better choice. I held myself to that standard when I ran for office, and I expect other challengers to meet this burden as well. However, I cannot apply this rule to this race. To do so would require an endorsement of the status quo in Austin for four more years, because, as my friend David Jennings continually reminds me, David Dewhurst has been a good Lieutenant Governor. But this election gives voters the first opportunity in almost 12 years to bring new thinking and approaches to applying our conservative principles to Texas government, so I cannot just blindly embrace the status quo and forgo this opportunity. Therefore, in reaching my decision I have treated this office as if it were open with no incumbent running, so as to review each candidate on a level field to determine which one would make the best Lieutenant Governor going forward.

3. Consistent with what I wrote in my last post, this endorsement is personal and does not reflect the thinking of any organization of which I am a member, officer, or board member. By making this endorsement, I am choosing to recuse myself from the evaluation and endorsement process for this race conducted by United Republicans of Harris County. This decision was not easy to make, and I doubt that I will make another such statewide endorsement before United Republicans completes and publishes its endorsements; but I believe this race is important enough to make this exception.

With these points in mind, I am making my endorsement based on a saying attributed to Andrew Jackson:

One man with courage makes a majority.

Specifically, I am looking for a candidate who has the knowledge and experience to understand the current and long-term issues facing Texas, the courage to address these issues, and the humility and wisdom to build a majority of Texans and Texas Senators in support of effective solutions based on conservative principles. I believe the one candidate who has shown that he has these necessary qualities is Jerry Patterson. A retired Marine officer and aviator who served his country in war and peace, Jerry has at least twice shown me that he has the courage I am looking for in the next Lieutenant Governor.

In the mid-1990s, when many Texas neighborhoods and businesses were suffering from an explosion of violent crime and many people here and across the country were clamoring for more gun control, Jerry stepped forward and instead called for Texans to be able to exercise their constitutional right to bear arms in response to these developments by advocating for a concealed-carry law. At the time, the chattering class (including many Republicans) was skeptical of Jerry’s idea, and he faced a daunting task to pass such legislation while serving in the minority party in the both houses of the Legislature. But, he had the courage to build support for this landmark legislation with the public and among legislators from both parties. With the passage of Texas’ law, a movement for such laws spread across the country together with a movement for clarifying and strengthening the Second Amendment right to bear arms. In the almost twenty years that have passed since Jerry took his stand, the Supreme Court has twice ruled that the right to bear arms is an individual right, and many locales and states have passed concealed-carry laws. As further vindication of Jerry’s pioneering efforts, credible studies show that locales and states where such laws have been implemented have experienced a statistically significant greater drop in violent crime than locales and states that have retained or increased restrictive gun control laws.

Then, in 2012, Jerry—alone among our statewide elected officials—not only recognized the need to change our party’s rhetoric and approach to immigration reform, he exhibited the courage to act on this need in a wise and measured way. When he stood and addressed the delegates of the 2012 convention of the Republican Party of Texas to support the “Texas Solution” contained in the new proposed platform plank, he showed immense political courage—courage that helped forge an overwhelming majority vote in favor of the new plank—when he knew that many of those delegates had entered the convention hall pre-disposed to oppose the new plank. In the end, Jerry helped create a majority of delegates willing to direct our party to take a new and better approach to immigration reform, and to lead a new national discussion on this important issue.

Go to Jerry’s website, http://votepatterson.com, and browse the “Issues” he has analyzed and addressed in detail, and I believe you will see evidence of a serious mind with the courage to address the issues we are facing with a fresh approach based on conservative principles. Whether it is education, water, transportation, immigration and border security, or state finances, Jerry is showing the courage needed to build a conservative majority to address these issues with long-term solutions, rather than by broadcasting or preaching to a vocal faction of the base of the party with worn-out slogans. It is clear that Jerry is ready to help govern Texas into the future, rather than keep us mired in the tired dogmas of the past, which too often have impaired our ability to apply real, timeless conservative principles to the problems facing Texas.

I know that I will not always agree with Jerry. But, I trust that he always will show the courage to present and debate his ideas candidly, and will use humility and wisdom to listen to others as he works to build a majority around conservative solutions.

This type of courage was once the hallmark of our greatest Republican leaders, including Lincoln and Reagan. And those leaders also shared another gift that Jerry possesses: the gift to be able to communicate his arguments clearly and with humor—humor that helps to engage and persuade. Use of such humor is not—as one of his opponents alleges—a personality flaw or a sign of a lack of seriousness. Instead, it is a gift that our leaders desperately need as we work to persuade a new and diverse generation of Texans to support and implement conservative public policies. Show me a man who disparages the use of humor in the public square, and I’ll show you a man who takes himself and his “cause” too seriously to be trusted with the power of elected office in a democracy.

It is because I trust Jerry Patterson to be a courageous conservative reformer, that I whole-heartedly endorse his candidacy to be the next Lieutenant Governor of Texas. I hope you will support him, too.

The Lesson We Should Learn From The Civil War

This column originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics.

This month, 150 years ago, the Civil War, or “War Between the States,” began with the attack on Fort Sumter, South Carolina. This month, 146 years ago, that War on the battlefield ended with the fall of Richmond, and the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Courthouse (though the military and political occupation of the states that had formed the Confederacy would continue for another 11 years). In between those two Aprils in the 1861 and 1865, on a cold and overcast day in November, 1863, President Lincoln crystallized the purpose for which the War would be fought to a conclusion:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.…

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…It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us…

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– that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom

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– and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Over the last few weeks several pundits have been wringing their hands over a renewed debate over the cause of the Civil War: was it state’s rights, was it slavery, or was it something else altogether? Moreover, the perennial debates have re-emerged over the propriety of flying a version of the flag of the Confederacy in public places. Most of the pundits seem to be chastising Americans who don’t seem to “get it” that the War was about slavery, and these same editorialists continue to froth at the mouth over the sight of the Stars and Bars.

I have a slightly different take on all of this that I’d like to share with you, and which I hope will add to mix of thoughts we consider as the nation’s Sesquicentennial of the Civil War starts its four-year observance.

I want to start by sharing an observation that would not have been accurate when I first came to Texas as a young man 31 years ago: the Civil War is finally over. Some time over these last three decades we stopped looking at each other with distrust or disdain while asking “where are your from;” we stopped celebrating a holiday for Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee and, instead, began celebrating a holiday for Martin Luther King, Jr., and universally celebrating Memorial Day; the party of Lincoln became the dominant political force in Dixie and selected a Chairman who was African-American; and we have elected an African-American as President of the United States.

For those people younger than 40 who grew-up as the final social remnants of this War faded from our habits and customs, it is hard to appreciate how miraculous this development really has been. For many of us who trace the roots of our family trees to the United States that exited before 1860, our family histories and heir-looms often include cherished stories and artifacts from the War, while for some those histories and heir-looms remind us of a darker, more painful memory of our failure to live up to our ideals. The collective memory fueled by these family histories helped continue habits and customs of regional, social, political, and racial animosities for generations—but which now seem so odd that they are truly hard to explain to young people today.

I was blessed to grow-up learning a very balanced story of the War. My ancestors fought on both sides of the War, and I grew-up with stories and heir-looms from both sides of the conflict. But I also grew-up in the region of Central Illinois, where Lincoln rode the circuit, and where he and Douglas debated in 1858. Surrounded by Lincoln’s memory, we were taught that, although the Confederacy had better generals and military strategy, and defended arguably correct interpretations of the Constitution and the law as it existed at that time, the purpose of the War described that day in Gettysburg by Lincoln, and the ultimate preservation of our nation that resulted from the War, were just and right.

Somehow, after all these generations, we have learned to retain a pride in the heritage of our families and communities, while at long last putting aside the animosities that we held for so long. Now, for all but a few diehards, we share a belief that preserving the nation and its founding ideals, and working to make those ideals a reality for all men and women who call themselves Americans, was just and right.

But to acknowledge all of these developments doesn’t mean that we have stopped thinking—or should ever stop thinking—about what caused that War, because those underlying causes are deeply imbedded in the continuing American experience:

* The division of our governmental responsibilities between states and the federal government;

* The different influences that the vast and varied geography spanning North America continue to have on regional and national economics and politics;

* The central influence that religion has played in developing our national character and shaping public debates;

* The ambition to create one people out of settlers and immigrants from every corner of the globe, and to equally protect the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of each individual; and

* The restlessness of spirit that liberty agitates.

By the 1840s, the institution of slavery had become the catalyst by which each of these causes combined to tear the country apart.

Although Americans have always shared a restless spirit, the 15 years that preceded the War may have been the most restless in our history. Our borders expanded through war and annexation to include what is now the entire Continental United States. New territories were being formed and settled, and new states admitted into the Union. America began to absorb one of the first great waves of European immigration due to drought, famine and revolution. Gold was discovered in California, which caused the greatest internal migration the country has ever experienced, and which invited immigration from across the Pacific, all of which would keep parts of California in a state of violent turmoil until the start of the War. The opposition Whig party would disintegrate into several factions arguing over the political impact of these issues, and slavery, and would eventually lead to the formation of a wholly new political party by the mid-1850s—the Republican Party. Central to all of these phenomena was the question of what to do about the institution of slavery.

By the 1840s the continuation of slavery was being challenged throughout the Western World, but it truly was coming into stark contrast with America’s ideals. However, no one quite knew whether and how a society could last that was not based on, and run by a homogeneous race, ethnicity, clan, tribe, or religion. Even the most enlightened thinkers of the day were pessimistic that a society could be maintained among people of different races (let alone people of different races who also came from different ethnic groups, clans, tribes and/or religious traditions) largely because it simply had never been tried or accomplished by any other society. This question impacted not only the debate about slavery, but also the fierce debate over immigration during the 1850s.

Throughout the political and economic debate over slavery, religious leaders were on both sides of the issue, created religious teachings to support each side, and lent a tone of moral fervor to each side’s hardening positions. These hardened positions split denominations and congregations, as well as communities.

The differences in climate and geography between the North and the South had created completely different economies and societies. Slavery was not just a moral and political issue, it was an issue that impacted the credit and solvency of the entire region, because slaves were used as collateral for credit throughout the South. The Southern economy, in turn, perpetuated plantations, small farms and small towns, while the North had begun its development of larger farms and urbanization based on a free-market for labor. By the end of the 1850s, though, the economics of slavery was beginning to unravel due to prolonged droughts in Europe and the development of high-yield cotton production in Egypt, which made Iowa farm products more valuable to our trading partners—and to our nation’s diplomacy—than Southern cotton.

The imbalance between the power of the states and the federal government prohibited the federal government from crafting a national solution to slavery. Time after time, Congress had attempted to reach compromises that addressed the slavery issue, but each time the compromises failed or were overturned by the Courts. Finally, the infamous Dredd Scott decision clarified for all that the national government lacked the power to address an issue that crossed state lines and was of national importance—the institution of slavery.

By the eve of the 1860 election, all of these causes of division between the North and the South became entangled with the issue of slavery. To glibly say that any one of the causes of division can be separated from the issue of slavery as the “cause” of the War is as wrong as saying that “slavery” was the only cause of the War. All of these problems came together over slavery to bring about the War, and “slavery” had to be resolved in order to address the underlying divisions that caused the regional conflict and end the War.

Slavery officially ended with the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution immediately after the military conflict ended, but resolving the underlying divisions took more than 100 years. Moreover, the causes of those divisions still roil our national debates today, and probably will for as long as there is an America. For instance:

* though we have expanded the scope of the power of the federal government 9 times by amendment, we still desire a limited federal government and debate the correct balance of local versus state versus federal authority;

* though mass media, mass production, and mass migration have reduced our regional economic and political differences, geography and history still combine to produce different regional viewpoints and activities that affect the nation;

* though race is no longer a source of religious dispute in this nation, the disciplines of our respective faiths still play a major role in the way we view the role of government and how we vote;

* though we have become the most heterogeneous society on Earth, we still struggle with how to assimilate new people into our nation and how to live by our ideals; and

* our desire to live as free people, and to develop our talents to their fullest potential, keep us restless and constantly in dynamic motion—both as individuals and as a society.

Rather than defend the public display of artifacts of a dispute long over—like flying the Stars and Bars over a government building—it is time to put those artifacts on our private shelves and get on with the continuing work of making our Founders’ vision work. Rather than continue to debate whether and how slavery helped cause the Civil War, we should recognize that slavery arose as the single issue that caused our divisions to become irreconcilable.

Then, we should commit to study and debate the tensions that will always exist in our society, and why, in the middle of the 1800s, they caused us to go to war with each other, in order to make sure that we never let that happen again. Through the learning that comes from such study and debate, we should gain the wisdom to never repeat that mistake.

Now that the Civil War is finally over, I hope that we start to gain such wisdom during this Sesquicentennial commemoration.