If he runs, I will support Governor Perry for the Presidency

This column originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics.

There is nothing quite like a vacation to allow you to clear your head and look at issues and ideas from a fresh perspective.

As I was finishing the first vacation in years during which I have done virtually no work and just focused on fun and family, I picked-up and read a newspaper article about the unfolding Republican Presidential race. As I finished the article, I reached a decision that really surprised me: if Rick Perry runs for President, I will support his candidacy.

Now before I explain why I will support Governor Perry’s candidacy, I need to write a quick disclaimer. I am declaring my support as an individual, and not as a representative of any group or club of which I may be a member or officer. Moreover, no one asked me to do this—this decision and the timing of this post were driven purely by me.

Ok—with that disclaimer behind me, let me explain why I am surprised by my decision, and why I reached decision.

I am surprised primarily by the change of fortunes and political viability of Governor Perry since 2006. Remember, that when he ran for re-election that year, he won with only a 39% plurality in a four-way field—not exactly a conventional predictor of a future presidential candidacy. Then, he pursued at least two policy initiatives that set his base on fire against him: his attempt to impose vaccinations on the young women of Texas without legislative approval; and his advocacy for the Trans-Texas Corridor development. When I ran for an appellate judicial seat in a ten-county district during 2007 and 2008, the negative reaction against the Governor and his political future were expressed openly in virtually every Republican meeting I attended. In fact, few openly predicted he would (let alone advocated that he should) run for re-election in 2010, and many were discussing Senator Hutchison as his successor.

Then, the Tea Party movement exploded. This new movement gave the Governor a new platform that he used effectively to articulate and advocate his political vision, and an attentive audience hungry for the message he was giving. The combination seemed to give the Governor a visible injection of energy and purpose as the 2010 campaign ensued. Eventually, he steamrolled over Senator Hutchison and Debra Medina without a run-off, and over the popular former Houston Mayor, Bill White, in the general election—a truly amazing turnaround. And it was a turnaround based on substance, which mixed the message of growth, frugality and federalism with the accomplishments of his tenure as Governor.

Given where his political fortunes stood a few years ago, and my own reservations over some of his specific decisions and positions over the years, I never thought I would be considering Governor Perry for President. But, in a time when our country needs a President who understands the need to down-size the federal government in order to reduce public debt and return political power to states, local governments and individuals, and in a year when there are obvious short-comings in each of the announced candidates for the Republican nomination, Governor Perry has emerged as the right man at the right time. He is the only candidate who seems to be clearly articulating the vision of the proper role of government at all levels.

Now there will be some who say that his prior political inconsistencies are too many to allow them to support him. To them, I recommend that they remember what Emerson said about “a foolish consistency.” In an essay about Self-Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson asked us to not judge consistency on the day-to-day life decisions and actions that we often make in reaction to events that we had not previously planned to address, but on an individual’s character that can only emerge from looking at a lifetime of decisions and actions. With the Internet and the 24/7 news cycle, such perspective is harder and harder to apply. However, if we look at Perry’s career over three decades of public life, his positions evidence a remarkable consistency in support of the economic and social conservatism that forms the core of the modern Republican Party. Moreover, his stated positions are closer to the vision for the “new” Republican Party that Reagan first espoused in 1977 than any of the other candidates in this year’s field.

As I write this post, there are two concerns I still have about a Perry candidacy, which I hope he and his team will address if he chooses to run. First, he must address the schizophrenic view of government held by most Americans—the view that simultaneously wants a smaller government that lives within its means, and low taxes, but wants no change to the government benefits they, or their family members, currently enjoy. Over the last 100 years, we gradually have allowed the federal government to use public tax dollars to provide charity to the less-fortunate and to underwrite economic risks—the risks associated with disability, retirement, health, home purchases, a college education, small business creation, and many others. Any Republican, who wants to beat Obama and actually obtain a mandate to lead this country through the changes needed to address the size and debt of the federal government, must explain to the independent voters who leaned Republican before 2008, but who voted for the Democrats in 2006 and 2008, how these changes will affect their lives—how will charity be provided to the less fortunate, and how will the risks of currently underwritten by government be addressed? Will government have a role? If so, what level of government will have that role, and what role will that level of government have? If government’s role is to be reduced, what will be expected from each individual in order to provide for charity and to protect against the risks of life that we all will inevitably face? If the answers to these questions are not clearly articulated, a Perry Presidency may not ever occur—but if it does, I fear it will fail.

Second, Governor Perry must address the concern that many outside of Texas will have in electing another Texas Republican so soon after both Bush Presidencies. Part of this concern will be addressed by the story of Texas’ economic growth during his tenure. However, I think Governor Perry also needs to consider a running mate who is from another region of the country, and preferably one who is addressing the current economic and governmental problems effectively. Ideally, one of the Republican Governors from Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio or New Jersey, would fit these criteria while also giving the ticket a better chance of picking up a state that Obama carried in 2008.

I know that this post (and its early timing) will surprise some of my friends and allies, as well as some within our party with whom I’ve had disagreements in the past, but I feel that, as Governor Perry makes his decision, it is important that he know the breadth of support he will have. To that end, I feel it is important for many of us in Texas to indicate our position about his candidacy now—one way or another. So, for what it’s worth, I pledge my support to his candidacy if he chooses to run.

Reflections: What will we do the morning after?

This column originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics.

Summer is over, another birthday has passed, and another of my daughters has struck-out on her own-in Austin. The Astros never really competed this summer-and said "good-bye" to some good veterans along the way-but they've ended the season showing signs of life for the future. My White Sox flirted with a pennant race long enough to make reading the morning box scores fun through Labor Day, and have since settled into their usual, second-place position. And the Cubs oh, well, there's always next year!

With fall upon us, politics is back.

I know for many of you it never left, but after the State Convention in June, I needed a break to re-charge my batteries after nearly 2 ½ years of campaigning: in September, 2007, I jumped head-long into what now seems like a continuous campaign that lasted more than 2 ½ years-first for a seat on a 10-county appellate bench; then to revitalize the local GOP; then to formally run for chairman of the Harris County Republican Party; and finally to help elect a new state chairman for the Republican Party of Texas. Even though I entered those campaigns with the support of my family and colleagues, and I believe my team, my supporters, and I made a positive long-term impact on our local party through these efforts, the shear length and depth of such a continuous commitment took a toll on my family and my work, because I hadn't structured and planned my life with an eye toward running for public office. As a result, I've needed to address this toll over the last few months with some long-needed vacation time and then a re-involvement in the practice of complex litigation. With the exception of giving a talk to a local club in August as a favor to fill-in for a speaker who had cancelled, and attending a few committee meetings, I've purposely stayed away from politics for a while to attend to family and work.

But, I haven't stopped thinking about politics completely. So, here are my reflections from a summer's rest...

First, we must finish the task at hand and win this election. There are only a little more than three weeks until the start of early voting, and six weeks until Election Day. While we still have a lot of work to do between now and November 2nd in order to win this election-locally and nationally-a momentum is behind the GOP and conservative candidates this year that I don't think there is time to derail. The biggest enemy now could be our own over-confidence (remember "President Dewey"?), so we need to complete the mission and get the vote out.

Then, when we wake-up on November 3rd, we must be prepared to lead, to govern, and to recruit strong candidates for the next election cycle. Let me give you my thoughts on each of these points:

We must be prepared to lead, with a vision that encompasses our cherished principles.

In my posts on this blog in May, June and July, I discussed an approach called "Renewing the American Community" with a focus on re-capturing a sense of Neighborhood and re-building our communities based on our conservative principles of limited and local government. I won't re-hash what I said in those posts, but I will recap this fundamental point: the original settlers from Europe established neighborhoods and congregations before they established governments. Successive waves of settlers governed their lives by being good and caring neighbors, and then later generations, culminating with the Founding Fathers, created governments to protect the society and culture the settlers had established. Were they perfect? No. Did they fail to apply their principles to all men and women? Yes. But, they built something unique in history, and the following generations fought amongst themselves to eventually apply those principles to all who lived here and came here. The story of the settler's creation, of the founder's vision, and of the following generations' struggles, is our heritage.

That heritage provides the vision we need to use to lead our communities, our state and our nation starting November 3rd. The men and women I've gotten to know over the last 2 ½ years in every corner of this region of the state, in every Tea Party group, and in every Republican organization, crave leaders who understand this heritage, who understand governments' proper role in preserving this heritage, and who are committed to work every day to preserve this heritage for our children and grandchildren. The men and women working hard to get conservatives elected this November need to hear of our party's commitment to this heritage, and of a plan for action consistent with our heritage. If we lead, these men and women will support us and work with us; if we don't, they will throw us out of office as soon as they can.

"The Pledge" that the Republican Congressional leadership presented last week is a good start, but doesn't go far enough. Republicans need a vision of action for not just the next two years, but for the next generation. To find it, we need to stop looking for new slogans, or trying to co-opt the slogans of the Tea Parties-we need to re-commitment to our heritage of Neighborhoods-of local action and limited government-and then fashion an agenda around that commitment. If we truly believe in the primacy of the individual and local government, that agenda must be built from the foundation of local government first. Continually focusing on the national agenda, though momentarily necessary because of the dire straits created by Obama's administration, is self-defeating to our cause in the long-run. Eventually, the national agenda must be drawn to complement and protect our local agendas.

We must turn from critics to problem-solvers and administrators, prepared to turn our principles into action and results.

In my last post on this blog on July 11th, I wrote about the "Tupelo Formula" for local action, which I broke down as follows:

•The community faced a problem that appeared intractable, and that had been confounded by multiple events-not unlike the confounding factors of under-education, under-employment, chronic crime and poverty, and the impulse to be "left alone", which exist in many of our neighborhoods today;

•One person, followed by a group of civic leaders, saw a strength within the community that created an opportunity that could be exploited to help the community address its problem;

•These citizens had the courage to take a risk with their own resources to take advantage of the opportunity and to share the gain with the community;

•These citizens involved businesses, private organizations, and local government in both the planning and the implementation of their plan; and

•The gains to the community were both short-term, and long-term, and were broadly shared-e.g., businesses were created and expanded, employment grew, per capita income grew, and schools improved.

I propose to our local conservative leaders on our school boards and city councils, and to our Republican officeholders at the county and state levels, that we sit-down after the election with other civic leaders, and begin to analyze and address our communities' needs through the prism of this formula. These needs should include at least the following:

•Our educational system, including the type of citizen we want to emerge from an elementary, secondary and college education in this state; the proper curriculum and delivery system needed to produce that citizen; and the most efficient and cost-effective mechanisms needed to pay for, account for, and administer that delivery system;

•Our transportation system and physical infrastructure, including a vision of where our citizens will live and work over the next 25 years; an understanding of how and where our goods and services will need to move; the maintenance cycle for all capital investments; an appreciation for the property rights of all Texans; and the most efficient and cost-effective mechanisms for paying for the needed infrastructure improvements; and

•Our criminal-justice and mental-health systems, including the effectiveness of such systems to protect victims, the public, and the person being held and/or treated within the systems; and alternatives that can reduce recidivism and improve the educational opportunities and long-term economic viability of the families and neighborhoods affected by the incarceration or mental-health treatment.

If we can address these issues, and create long-term strategies for addressing them at the most local level possible, we can begin to make government live by our principles while addressing urgent problems; and we can begin to address some of the most vexing structural pressures on our public budgets, which put upward pressure on our taxes and downward pressure on job growth.

Obviously, other problems, like the looming public-sector pension issue, will have to be addressed soon-but we need to start somewhere and show the public that our principles are relevant to modern life and modern problems.

To be the majority party, we must recruit and support strong conservatives to run for local, state and national offices over the next two years, who share our principles and are committed to use them to govern.

As I often said during my campaign for Chair of the HCRP, if we are the party that believes in local government, we must get involved in local government. This means fielding candidates now for the elections of 2011 and 2012. Remember, that in 2012 the local GOP will be the challenging party for countywide offices for the first time since 1996. Included among these offices will be between 30 and 40 local judgeships that will be open for Republican challengers, and we need to start finding competent, conservative members of the legal community to run for these offices.

But in 2011, many of the 416 local city council and school board seats will be up for election, including Houston's Mayor and Controller offices. Moreover, Utility and Emergency Services Districts hold elections each year. From just a rough review of the current holders of these offices, Republicans or Republican-voting independents hold already hold at least 40% of these offices. We need to talk with those officeholders, determine how we can help them keep their offices and how we can support them after they win. Most importantly, we need to determine who holds the other offices and recruit candidates who share our principles to run for those offices. Given the number of offices spread-out over 24 school districts, 34 cities, and many Utility and Emergency Services districts, this process must start now.

Finally, we need to continue the recruitment of new GOP precinct chairs-especially in communities where we need to re-introduce ourselves. For example, once this election cycle ends, those activists who have helped candidates like John Faulk, Fernando Herrera, Sarah Davis, Jim Murphy, and Steve Mueller, need to be actively recruited to stay involved by becoming precinct chairs.

If we can expand our presence in local offices and precincts before the 2012 election cycle starts in earnest, we will start that cycle with the army we will need to win that election and retake Harris County.

Although I have committed to my family that I will not run again for a public office myself, I am committed to the plan of attack I have outlined in this post, and will do all I can over the coming years to work with our party, our candidates and our elected officials to make the GOP the majority party in every part of this county and this state; and to not just cherish our conservative principles, but to use our conservative principles creatively to govern effectively. Will you help in this effort beginning November 3rd?

It’s time to shift from the Circus to the Neighborhood

This column originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics.

After the RPT’s State Convention in Dallas earlier this month, Dave asked me to give him my recap. Since that time, I’ve sat down on several occasions to try to write the recap—but no words seemed to come out.

In many ways, what happened in Dallas is a culmination of what many of us have worked for since late 2008, and it is hard to put into words the optimism I feel for the party at this point—even as I hear that the financial condition Steve Munisteri found when he took over the party was worse than anyone outside the organization had known. He has a big job ahead of him, and we all need to help.

I’ve decided to leave it to others to someday tell the story of how Steve engineered his victory. It is a story that needs to be told, and those closest to his effort deserve the credit and the opportunity to tell that story when they are ready. However, I can say this—driving home from work one night shortly after the convention, I heard a certain State Senator who hosts a radio show (and who gave a raucous, divisive speech just before the floor vote at the convention) spin how and why Steve was elected, and he was wrong about almost everything he said.

In fact, much of the challenge we face as a party, and will face as we move together into the future, is to stop taking the word of such self-anointed “ringmasters” as gospel, and to start thinking for ourselves. And these “ringmasters” need to be careful about over-use of circus analogies, because some in our party are tired of such clowns and midway acts anointing themselves to be the “ringmasters” of our party’s future.

Now, rather than get further side-tracked by circus metaphors and divisiveness, I want to follow the lead of Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi, whose truly Reaganesque convention speech (which followed and eclipsed that State Senator’s speech) called on us to unite against the Democrats and to lead our country away from what the Democrats have done. Therefore, I want to continue to address a topic that I started to talk about in a post at the end of May—how will we lead if Republicans are again given control of government nationally, and are kept in office at the state and local levels? To answer this question, I want to return to that concept I discussed in that previous post: “Renewing the American Community”.

At the heart of this concept is a word that we don’t often use anymore: Neighborhood. We often talk of families, of churches, of organizations, of communities, of villages, of cities, etc.; but rarely do we talk about neighborhoods. If you’re like me, the word conjures up memories of friends and families that lived on the same block, who went to school with us, who played on the same teams with us, who served in the same scout troops with us, or who attended church with us. It brings back memories of our friend’s mothers and fathers, who looked out for us as we walked to school, or to the school bus; who kept an eye on us as we played in the street, or down at the park; who took us in when our parents had to go on a trip or out for an evening, or just gave us a safe “home away from home”; and who told our parents if anything went awry, but who could also give us a safe and confidential ear when we most needed it. More than a place, it was a shared experience, in which the members took responsibility for the other members—a civil congregation.

If we have lost anything over the last generation, we’ve lost this sense of neighborhood—this civil congregation that has been the heart of American Exceptionalism from its beginning. I believe the mission of American Conservatism and the GOP is not just to unravel Obamaism, but to re-establish this sense of neighborhood applicable to the 21st Century. To do that we must first remember how we got those neighborhoods in the first place.

It was the enterprise of spreading neighborhoods across a continent to which prior generations committed their hopes and dreams. When those dissident European Protestants first arrived and settled the Eastern seaboard, they started the process and created colonial and state governments to protect their settlements. Then, from the earliest actions of the first Congresses under the Articles of Confederation, the federal government promoted the creation and spread of neighborhoods. If you look at the Land Ordinance of 1785, and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, the founding generation was intent on devising a scheme for establishing the physical blueprint for future neighborhoods—surveys of townships to include schools and churches and post offices.

As new settlers migrated westward during the 19th Century, they often moved as whole communities or congregations; for example, settlers, and their offspring, who left Salem, Massachusetts together and started west eventually (over one or more generations) reached Salem, Oregon, and left Salems in many states along their journeys. As immigrants came to the cities, they created neighborhoods in city sections—“Little Italy”, “Chinatown”, “Brighton Beach”, “Hyde Park”, and many others. Neighborhoods were home to factory workers and bankers, to every social and economic strata of the community.

Neighborhoods furnished the primary support for those who needed help. In his ground-breaking book, The Tragedy of American Compassion, which helped lead to the welfare reform legislation in 1996, Marvin Olasky, a professor at the University of Texas, outlines the history of neighborhood-based efforts to provide help to those in need. The combination of local religious and private organizations, and of ad hoc volunteers, created a safety net of people who knew who needed help, who knew who they were helping, who knew the specific needs of those they were helping, and who could properly assess the type and amount of help needed. This familiarity with the person needing the help also provided an incentive for both people to succeed—to get the person to a state whereby they could help themselves; government help was reserved for those who truly could not help themselves. The volunteers were not professionals—they were neighbors. It was this volunteer spirit is one of the attributes that de Tocqueville found so exceptional in America.

Frederick Jackson Turner, the famous University of Wisconsin and Harvard University History Professor, gave a keynote speech at the Columbia Exposition of 1893 in Chicago, in which he noted that the frontier was gone. Almost thirty years later, Turner would note

Western democracy through the whole of its earlier period tended to the production of a society of which the most distinctive fact was the freedom of the individual to rise under conditions of social mobility, and whose ambition was the liberty and well-being of the masses. The conception has vitalized all American democracy, and has brought it into sharp contrasts with the democracies of history, and with those modern efforts of Europe to create an artificial democratic order by legislation. The problem of the United States is not to create democracy, but to conserve democratic institutions and ideals.

Between 1893 and 1920, when Turner wrote those words, the country began to cope with the problems created by the Industrial Revolution that Europe had been dealing with since the mid-19th Century. European movements had tried to change the social dynamic through laws designed to give the common man more direct say in their monarchical governments, while giving those governments more responsibility over the welfare of the common man. What Turner noted was that America already had created a system whereby citizens’ liberties were protected and they could participate in government—it didn’t need to legislate it into existence, but it did need to preserve it. Part of that American system was the neighborhood.

Throughout the 20th Century, we failed to heed Turner, and we followed Europe’s model for the “democratic welfare state”, and helped to slowly destroy our neighborhoods. First in the cities, and then in outlying suburbs and towns, the places remained but the sense of neighborhood disappeared. Some of the changes to the social dynamic were well-intentioned—even necessary, at least in the short-term. For instance,

* arguably, the Great Depression required some infusion of federal action to organize resources to get the country back to work, because the problem was national (even international) in its scale; and

* the extension of the recognition and protection of real liberty to minorities and women was long overdue.

However, each of these changes created consequences that destroyed neighborhoods:

* the change in the relationship of the individual with the national government; the national, programmatic approach to public welfare; and the professionalization of social work became a permanent fixture of American life, which the welfare reform legislation of 1996 did not fundamentally change;

* the extension of real liberty to minorities led to greater social mobility for middle-class minorities, which led to the separation of those persons from their traditional communities and led to a permanent underclass left to be cared for by the national and state governments; and

* the extension of real liberty to women took them out of their roles as the permanent sentinels of the neighborhoods—the mothers on watch for the care of the children, the volunteers to help those in need, the teachers and volunteers in the local schools—and placed them in the permanent workforce.

While each of these steps created positive benefits for individuals or groups, they left a fundamental void in our unique, American society.

We never have addressed the void that these actions left in our society—the loss of our neighborhoods—and the consequences of that void on our liberties. Today we live in gated “communities”, subdivisions with fancy names, fenced-in yards, large houses or high-rise flats with so many built-in conveniences that we never have to leave them except to go to work (that is--if you don’t work from home), and many of us now home-school our children. We have all these material benefits, but many people don’t know the people who live in the next house or apartment, or on the next street--let alone, know of their needs. Obamaism is a further extension of this model, that would limit our liberties and redistribute our wealth to bestow material benefits and safety directly to each of us, without calling on any of us to be good neighbors.

If we don’t begin to accept the responsibility that liberty expects of us, I fear we will ultimately become a “Place” where taxes are compelled from some to bestow benefits to others, rather than continue to be a “Nation” where we share an interdependence and a love of liberty.

How can the GOP begin to address these issues? The answers are at once simple and familiar—we need to promote those activities that build strong neighborhoods. Here are some examples:

* Promote policies that encourage small-business creation—small business creation is the easiest way to help people balance their need to make a living with our country’s need to rebuild neighborhoods. Businesses employ people, and employing people effects their lives. Every paycheck sets aside a retirement fund, pays for health care, provides for the sustenance of a family and (indirectly) for the support of the neighborhoods where employees live. Products or services generated by a business effects its customers, and those people touched by its customers. Wealth created by businesses increases the tax base and tax rolls, which in turn fund our schools—more wealth, creates better-funded schools. Programs that a business supports can enrich the lives of residents in the community where the business is located, as well as the lives of its employees. Each of us spends more time every day with our co-workers than with our family: the positive bonds you formed through this activity ripple out in every direction.

* Promote involvement in a traditional community-based service organization—between 1870 and 1920 many of the organizations that we remember as the backbones of our neighborhoods were created, and most still exist: Rotary, Kiwanis, the PTA, and many more. These organizations were designed to help serve the needs of their communities, and provide the social networks that build and maintain neighborhoods. Most of these organizations are crying for new members, but time and other commitments keep people from joining. The GOP at every level should be promoting policies that shorten commutes to work, offer tax breaks to companies who give employees paid time to work for schools and volunteer organizations, and offer tax breaks to individuals to donate time to charities (and faith-based organizations) as well as money or assets.

* Promote assimilation programs—To be a nation we must assimilate. Schools, churches, and childhood activities in the neighborhood were designed to assimilate children into our society as adults. Newcomers need the same help. Let’s not just argue about it, let’s act. Like the local GOP is now doing with its new Eastside Office, lets promote policies that give incentives to private organizations to create community centers and teach adults English and citizenship; that give children a safe place to meet, do their homework, and play; and that give families a safe place to interact and get to know and care for each other.

* Promote policies that keep families and neighborhoods intact and building wealth—Locally, our GOP Juvenile Court Judges worked to create a model program, funded with private dollars and partnered with neighborhood churches, that is keeping first-time, non-violent juvenile offenders in school and out of jail. These types of programs will fight the long-term problems of under-education, under-employment, and chronic poverty that fester in communities where too many young people drop out of school and get a criminal record. We need more of these innovative programs that help rebuild strong schools, strong families, and strong neighborhoods.

Some of you may think this agenda is too simple and too short—it is, but I must stop this post at some point. What I really want to do is to start you thinking about how we can build a positive agenda for running the government based on our ideals—based on that sense of Neighborhood that focused our liberty and built this country—and to re-build the nation we believe in. Give me your thoughts.