I Hate Politics

My political posts are popular with everybody but me. Some people think I’m too far left. Some people think I’m too far right. How they see me depends largely on what they bring to the table.

For most of my life, I’ve focused on individual bills and initiatives. To me, that makes the most sense, and for the most part, other than counting votes, the party becomes irrelevant. The fact that so many guys will only vote according to how their party votes makes me a little crazy. I’m like, “Think for yourself, man! That’s why they sent you here!” What I want is people whose first loyalty is whatever region of Mississippi they’re from, not their party.

This is how the constitution was designed, but I guess it’s easier to clump people together by some sort of weird set of common interests rather than saying “we’re neighbors. I don’t like you, but we live on the same street, so let’s work on repairing the street.”

I’ve seen both parties do fuck shit to each other. I mean, that’s why ratfucking exists, right? Lately, though, and I can’t explain it, but they’re starting to do fuck shit to each other, which I can’t explain. Maybe they’re just misanthropes and can’t stand to be around anybody. The stuff Republicans do to Republicans makes the news more, but the Democrats are doing some genuine fuck shit to other Democrats, even here in Mississippi, and I gotta wonder what the fuck is going on. What are we really fighting for? What happened to Rose Cochran makes me see red.

When Daddy was alive, he’d write out his legislative agenda, and we’d talk about it. One day, I said, “Would it be cool if I made my own?” Daddy smiled.

I’ve never wanted to be a king-maker like Daddy or Warren Hood. I saw the shit they went through. Just the shit they went through to position Charlie Deaton or Bill Winter had some really cool parts and some really unsavory ones. Everybody thought Daddy was this big Democrat, but the last candidate he really worked to position was Jack Reed.

Then word came down that Jack Reed and Gil Carmichael were out in the Republican party. What? What’d they do? Jack Reed, on his own, prevented the private school panic in Tupelo. He was a prime architect of the economic miracle that happened to Tupelo in the eighties. People liked him. He could talk to anybody and get them to see his side of things, but then one day, he was out, just out. I still don’t know why. Then Daddy died.

When Daddy died, I started blaming everything he was involved with for why he died, including Mississippi banking and Mississippi politics. The next Democratic governor was running around on his wife with a girl I knew from Prep. I’ve never been comfortable crossing romantic paths with politicians, but it’s happened several times—even with Bill Clinton. I might even like the guy if he didn’t cheat on his wife. I don’t even like Clinton’s wife that much, but that’s some bullshit. If you can’t keep your vow to your family, how can I expect you to keep your vow to Mississippi?

A lot of guys see marital fidelity differently from me. Women aren’t collectibles. That’s about all I’m gonna say about that.

Being Governor of Mississippi sounds like such a cool gig, but I’ve seen it ruin guys. It helps if you get elected toward the end of your career, like Fordice and Barbour, where you’re just gonna retire anyway, but there’s nothing sadder than a still-pretty-young guy, wandering around Jackson, unable to get on with a decent firm, having to remind people you once were Governor.

One guy who escaped that was Ray Mabus. Not quite forty when he was elected (that’s close to a record), the Governors of Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana caught the attention of the US and foreign press. Called the “Yuppie Governors,” that’s pretty much exactly what they were. The idea of “yuppies” spawned during the Reagan years. For a while, everybody I knew wanted to be a yuppie.

The breakout of that group was Bill Clinton. It surprised me, but it didn’t surprise me. I didn’t like him, but I recognized that he had a sort of mesmerizing way with people.

When Clinton’s presidency started listing to one side, and everything went to shit with Mike Espy, Clinton brought in Mabus to shore things up with our most important Middle Eastern Ally. Though Mabus didn’t get his second term, his career was rising after serving as governor, and in Mississippi, that’s uncommon.

Part of that is just Ray’s personality. He seems personable and charming, and he is, but he’s also a hungry wolf and will pursue his prey till it drops from exhaustion. It helps that he was born with more money than God and kept figuring out ways to add to it.

Considering what passes in Washington now, what happened to Espy drives me a little crazy. Espy got done over Super Bowl tickets and a $1,500 scholarship for his girlfriend. Most of the money came from Tyson Foods, which was our second biggest client at the time. The older girl I was seeing, whom Bill Clinton kept calling, worked for Tyson. She swears she never went out with him, and it’s really none of my business, but the whole thing made me feel really weird about the guy. I don’t mind being interested in the same girl some other fella is interested in, but when the other fella is president, it’s just weird.

I like Tate Reeves a lot. Most of my friends don’t. I remember when he and Elee were at Millsaps. She was at the very top of the food chain. He was somewhere near the bottom. She thought he had potential. I guess he did.

Like me, liberals think he’s too conservative, and conservatives think he’s too liberal. That may be the Millsaps curse. They taught us to think for ourselves, and I guess he did. Tate’s main interests are education and business. He doesn’t have much time for the obsessive social agenda the GOP has these days, so we’re pretty much golden.

I’d like for him to have more interest in Chamber of Commerce-type businesses than in Fortune 500 businesses, but I think he’s taking what he can get. The American economy is hella different from what it was forty-five years ago. My concern is that these Fortune 500 companies come to Mississippi, and they make money here, but the money doesn’t stay here. It goes off to New York or California, or wherever, whereas if we spent the same time and money on Chamber of Commerce-type businesses, almost all that money would stay in Mississippi, improving Mississippi banking and everything around it. That might be a pipe-dream, though. I don’t know what it will take to bring small businesses back. Getting everybody to put “Buy Local” stickers on their cars aint doing it.

I worry that Tate is being manipulated by people who don’t give a fuck about him and won’t be there for him in three years. He’s only like three years older than Sam and Erin. I hope I’m wrong. I really do. I love his wife, and his daughters appear to be as strong as Ajax, but Mississippi can be cruel. I’ve seen people I care a hell of a lot about get chewed up by this machine.

About once a week, somebody invites me to join the Democratic Party. Do they even have a party? Off the top of your head, tell me the legislative agenda of the Mississippi Democratic Party. You can’t, can you? Even if you’re the biggest MAGA guy out there, the Democrats should be able to articulate their message well enough where you’d know it, and yet… I don’t even know it myself. Your agenda can’t be “we’re against what the other guys are for.” Don’t invite me to a party and expect me to bring the party with me.

There’s a young guy from Millsaps running against Cindy Hyde Smith. He’s like two points behind her. If she’s not freaking out about that, she’s not paying attention. Smith doesn’t seem to have any agenda of her own. She’s a MAGA lap-dog, which is fine, but her position should be Mississippi first, not party first.

I’ll tell you a secret that should be obvious. MAGA doesn’t give a shit about Mississippi. We don’t have enough electoral votes or congressional seats to matter. California has 54 seats in the House, and Mississippi has 4. You have zero leverage when the party knows you’re gonna support whatever they tell you to support, and right now, that’s happening with MAGA. It’s not all that great when they’re in power, and it’s kind of pathetic when they’re not.

MAGA desperately wants to get rid of Bennie Thompson because he chaired the Jan 6 Committee. If Mississippi has just four seats in the House, we need a member from each party in at least one of those seats. The GOP won’t be in power forever. If all our votes are with them when the power switches, once again, Mississippi has no leverage. Mississippi desperately needs leverage.

It drives people crazy that I’m not loyal to either party. That’s just not how I was raised. I’m for Mississippi. What have you done for me lately?

My legislative agenda goes like this.

I’m for education on all levels.

I’m for keeping private and public education (and their funds) very separate. There are legitimate reasons why you might put your child through a private education, but once you start taking public funds to do it, you lose that autonomy, and if you’re gonna surrender your autonomy, we should put all our resources in the public schools.

I’m for small business. My family has been involved in the Chamber of Commerce for four generations. Small businesses keep their money in their community. They strengthen local banking and every other system of a local community. Some of the deregulation that happened in the eighties made life harder for small businesses. They both need and deserve as much governmental support as they can get. They don’t have nearly as much voice as big business (which is how we got in this mess), but they serve a vital purpose.

I’m for safe banking. Keeping Mississippi banks safe from out-of-state pirate banks is incredibly important. Doing your banking in Mississippi helps Mississippi.

I’m for a strong and safe environment. Agribusiness is key to Mississippi, and we can only do that with clean water and clean soil. I’m for safer hunting laws to preserve the sportsman’s environment. It’s hard to hunt many turkeys if you’re clear-cutting the woods. Most of what I know about the environment comes from Charlie Deaton, one of the greatest outdoorsmen of the 20th century.

I’m for staying out of people’s personal and sexual lives. I don’t give a fuck who you marry or where you pee. Transgender athletes never really existed in Mississippi, but we have laws preventing them from competing anyway. Even if there were 10,000 of them, I’d be for the NCAA to make the ruling on this, not the Mississippi Legislature. Expanding government to do something a private sector group is already doing is a terrible idea. The NCAA exists to make sure sports are fair. Let them do their job.

The only thing Mississippi has a lot of is culture. I’m for reasonable, but generous governmental investment in the cultural life of Mississippi. What burns most of that money is the performative arts (dance, music, theater), but I’m ok with that. Those are also the most powerful methods of communicating our culture.

That’s it. That’s my whole agenda. You now know more about what I want than you know about what the Mississippi Democratic Party wants.