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How well I remember a classic B.C. cartoon during the 1968 presidential campaign.
(I was just 12, but having recently discovered politics, I was fascinated. It was a time of good music, to be sure – also race riots, Vietnam and social unrest. Lots of folks paid attention to politics.)
In the cartoon, two cave men are talking. One says, “I had a nightmare last night. I went into the voting booth and there was only one name on the ballot for president.” “Who was it?” the other asked. “Humphrey Wallace Nixon.”
Democrat Hubert Humphrey, third-party candidate George Wallace and Republican Richard Nixon were the three candidates in that heated race. Nixon won and got re-elected before he self-destructed over Watergate. He resigned the summer after I graduated from high school, by which time I, like millions of Americans, was sick of and cynical about politics. Now in Texas, we have a governor’s race on the 2010 ballot. Rick Perry is seeking to become the longest-tenured governor in the state’s history (Really, Texas? Really?) while former Houston mayor Bill White won the Democratic nomination and looks like the most viable opponent Perry has faced in his tenure as governor. What’s the name on the ballot in my nightmare? Perry White. For those of you who don’t read comic books, Perry White was the gruff editor-in-chief (“Don’t call me chief!”) of Metropolis’s newspaper, the Daily Planet, where mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent worked when he wasn’t slipping off to the nearest phone booth to change into his Superman tights. This bastion of journalistic excellence looked like a big-city daily used to look – spunky reporters in fedoras running hither and yon, interrupting politicians with abrasive questions, popping flashes in everyone’s faces. Then they’d rush back to the newsroom and yell “Stop the presses!” and rebuild the front page. Heady stuff. I don’t think “Stop the presses!” gets yelled anymore, even in the big-city dailies that remain. They just update the web page. And I’m pretty sure the newsrooms are not crowded beehives anymore, since most dailies have laid off hundreds of reporters. There are no typewriters clanking, no teletype tickers banging out the latest from AP and UPI. Computers hum softly, phones twitter and keyboards click quietly. Newsrooms are more like libraries now than the chaotic, churning caldrons of ink they once resembled. Personally, I have never yelled “Great Ceasar’s ghost!” or “Stop the presses!” although I did stop a press once when I spotted a glaring typo in a headline. (Now we don’t own a press, so I don’t see typos until they’ve already been delivered.) As best I can tell, none of this has anything to do with the governor’s race. If Perry wins, it will be because he’s a good-looking, clever politician with lots of money and enough of a track record as a conservative to appeal to the Texas GOP majority. Texas is, still, a Republican state. And if Perry can link White to Obama, Washington and the big-spending feds, he will. That’s how he defeated the well-respected U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison in the primary. He didn’t run against her – he ran against Washington. Kay never knew what hit her. I don’t know anything about White, but when I look for information I’m pretty sure the Perry campaign will not be my source. White was apparently a successful mayor in Houston, which can’t be easy, so I’ll give him a look. I suspect a lot of Texans will. In a general election, the labels of Democrat and Republican are usually less important to most voters than the person whose name is on the ballot. I’m sure there’s some great insight in this Perry White thing, but as you can see, I haven’t yet discovered it. Maybe it’s that Texas needs a gruff editor-in-chief type, a governor who multi-tasks, barks orders, acts decisively and with godlike conviction, getting things done with deadline urgency – a real-life Perry White. Maybe we need Superman, or a mild-mannered geek in search of a phone booth. Perhaps I just read too many comic books, back before I started paying attention to politics. Or maybe in the grand scheme of things, there’s not much difference. Bob Buckel is publisher of the Azle New |
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