Why Does Dolph Briscoe Want To Be Governor?
And when is he going to start?
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A public official should be judged in more important ways than the number or press conferences he holds. But Briscoe’s relations with the press have promoted his reputation as a phantom more by his own choice than by theirs. He has gone out of his way to promise regular news conferences and then repeatedly broken his own pledge. On November 10, 1972, shortly after his election, Briscoe promised reporters he would meet with them regularly before the inauguration to discuss his legislative plans; he then virtually disappeared until January. By May 1973, four months into his first term and deep in the midst of the legislative session, he had not called a single conference strictly devoted to answering newsmen’s questions. At the beginning of the 1975 legislative session, he volunteered the promise to meet with reporters once a week; by April, he had gone five consecutive weeks without doing so. When he called in reporters to announce his opposition to the proposed constitution in October, 61 days had passed since his last “weekly” press conference. Challenged by reporters, the governor responded that, well, he might just have press conferences every 61 days instead.
Politicians commonly have friction with the press, but not in the way Briscoe does. The point is not so much that he tries so hard to avoid reporters, as that he makes gratuitous promises of cooperation which he then does not keep.
Most of the encounters which the governor’s aides describe as “press conferences” are actually situations in which a few stray reporters have caught him in a hallway. As the governor wound up his speech to the Texas Research League last November, reporters for major Texas dailies whispered a request to this writer to join them at a door which seemed to be his most likely exit. “You don’t even need to have any questions,” one of them said. “We just need some more linebackers. If we can block the door he’ll stop and talk to us for a minute, but if there are just a few of us he slips right on by.”
Some of the governor’s absences have been downright baffling. In the weeks after his election, he remained in seclusion at Uvalde, not merely avoiding the press but also denying audiences to senators who tried to visit him. The first week of 1973 came; the Legislature came; but still, no Briscoe. He had scarcely begun to assemble a staff. House members joked openly about the “mystery man,” going so far as to ask whether the Speaker had formed a committee to “go find Briscoe and let him know we’re down here.” Two years later his behavior was even odder. A long-standing Capitol tradition calls for both houses of the Legislature to send a ceremonial delegation to the governor on the opening day of the session. The governor is expected to greet them politely, and they are expected to return and inform their colleagues that the governor has, indeed, greeted them politely. It is one of those ritual civilities of politics, symbolic of the separate but shared exercise of power: a gentlemen’s courtesy that politicians ordinarily enjoy. In 1975 Briscoe was inexplicably missing. Recalls a high-ranking Senate employee: “We sent five dignitaries, headed by [elderly East Texas Senator A. M.] Aikin. A few minutes later Aikin came back, and the Senate asked for his report. He said, ‘We went to the governor’s office and it was locked. We found an aide who let us in the back door. He wasn’t there.’”
There are those who believe the governor is simply following in the footsteps of his distant relative Andrew Briscoe, who, having been elected to the 1836 Convention that produced the Texas Declaration of Independence, arrived nine days late for the signing. But for most people in the Capitol, the jokes have begun to wear thin. If the governor of Texas were nothing more than a figurehead, an American counterpart of the British monarch, Briscoe’s absenteeism could be dismissed as a harmless eccentricity. Instead he is an essential cog in the governmental machinery whether he wants to be or not. Regardless of whether a governor is liberal or conservative, public business cannot satisfactorily go on without him; the chief executive’s attitude affects state government in hundreds of ways, shaping decisions others must make even in areas over which he holds no direct administrative responsibility. His appointees to boards and commissions often want to know if he supports or opposes controversial policies before they make an irrevocable decision; legislators want to know if he plans to veto a bill before they expend their political capital trying to pass it. Because the governor does so much to set the tone of public affairs, even other statewide-elected officials need to know what he thinks.
Briscoe’s odd behavior has consequently impeded the conduct of state business in ways far more significant than his failure to greet A. M. Aikin’s entourage. One example is the experience of Forrest Smith, a tax attorney for Mobil Oil who served as Chairman of the Texas Youth Council (the state agency that oversees correctional facilities for delinquent children). He wrote the governor in January 1975 requesting an “urgent meeting” to discuss legislative matters affecting the Council. Not only did he never get the meeting, his letter was never acknowledged. Three or four follow-up calls to Briscoe’s office were never returned. Smith—a Dallas conservative leader of some renown and a devoted Briscoe supporter who once personally introduced the governor as “a born-again Christian” at the First Baptist Church—is plainly puzzled by the experience. “I have no knowledge that he ever saw my letter or knew I’d called,” he says, “although I assume the messages did get through.” When Smith’s term expired in October 1975 the governor appointed someone else to fill the vacancy without any comment or explanation to him. Smith, who says he feels no rancor about the experience but seems to be a glutton for punishment, then wrote Briscoe a letter pledging support in the future. That was never acknowledged either.
Legislators have been particularly critical of Briscoe’s unwillingness to make his wishes known in time to affect the legislative process. In an example that could be multiplied many times over, one Houston representative wrote Briscoe a note two months before the 1975 session began, describing a pair of simple housekeeping bills and asking whether “you have objection to either bill, if they pass together.” He never heard another word. Under John Connally, Preston Smith, or any other Texas governor in memory, that sort of thing simply would not have happened.
An elected state official who was considering what he regarded as an “extremely significant” change in policy affecting the state’s revenues repeatedly sought Briscoe’s opinion on the controversial step. “For ninety days I left messages asking him to call me, but he never did,” the official says. “So finally I just went ahead on my own. If he were a governor he’d not only want to be consulted, he’d expect to be. I don’t think he even cared.” Legislative leaders including former Speaker of the House Price Daniel, Jr., and current Speaker Bill Clayton freely acknowledge that Briscoe has ignored important calls or letters; they are at a loss to explain why. One former state official, a friend of many governors, says, “I could pick up the phone and call Connally and get him—or he’d call me back. I could call Preston Smith and get him. But Briscoe? Impossible. It’s disturbing.” *
Joe Allbritton of Houston, one of the nation’s most influential businessmen, was exasperated by his chronic difficulties in reaching the governor while serving as chairman of the Offshore Terminal Commission. General James Cross, who as the Commission’s Executive Director notified Briscoe’s office “numerous” times that Allbritton needed to see him or consult with him over the phone, says that during a period of two and a half years “I was unable ever to get in touch with the governor himself” on Allbritton’s behalf. While this was happening, the Commission was engaged in ticklish discussions about whether to recommend public or private ownership of the offshore superport.
Briscoe’s own department heads sometimes have difficulty seeing him. According to one, requests for interviews on “matters of paramount importance” ordinarily take five or six days to arrange (although there are rare instances where Briscoe has granted an interview almost immediately). Decisions on other matters requiring the governor’s answer or approval may take up to three months. He adds: “We [Briscoe’s department heads] have urged more ‘cabinet meetings’ because we need to know what direction he wants us to move in.”
Virtually every politician has an innermost group of trusted political advisers through whom outsiders develop a path of circuitous access. Roosevelt had his “kitchen cabinet,” Wilson had Colonel Edward House, LBJ had the informal “Texas Mafia.” By contrast Briscoe is a remarkable—one is even tempted to say unique—loner. Two months of interviews among politically attuned Texans, including statewide officholders, could not produce a single person who felt he could say with any assurance who Briscoe listens to. The politicians are as mystified as everyone else.
On frequent occasions in Austin, Washington, and elsewhere, Briscoe’s personal demeanor has conveyed the impression that he is curiously detached from his work. “He seemed unfamiliar with the issue” is a recurring phrase time after time in news reports of his press encounters. At one point last session, when he was asked about the school finance plan he had earlier labeled his “first priority,” it became painfully obvious that the governor was unaware a House committee had rejected most of his proposal two days before. A state legislator standing near Briscoe at a reception in May 1973 realized with mounting horror that the governor had failed even to recognize Education Commissioner J. W. Edgar. “How,” he shook his head sadly later, “can he solve school finance if he doesn’t even know the Commissioner of Education?” Another oversight had occurred earlier that year: several weeks into the 1973 session that saw a major fight over Briscoe’s marijuana and drug legislation, officials of the State Program on Drug Abuse, a division of the governor’s own office, were shocked to discover that he was ignorant of their existence.
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