George W. Bush Interview With Mark K. Updegrove (Audio) 
The Six-Billion-Dollar Men
George W. Bush, Rick Perry, and Pete LaNey will have the pleasant task of divvying up a huge budget surplus in the upcoming legislative session—if greed, partisan politics, and presidential ambitions don’t get in the way.
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One thing in your favor is that a lot of folks underestimate you. You’ve undoubtedly heard the joke that’s making the rounds about the familiar nickname for lieutenant governor: “Rick Perry gives a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘lite guv.’” What do they expect from someone whose former job, agriculture commissioner, wasn’t exactly a training ground for the state’s big issues? The last ag commissioner who thought he was a big shot was Jim Hightower, and it led to his defeat—by you. Don’t fall into the trap of trying to prove that the folks who think you’re a lightweight are wrong. Just make sure that you don’t prove that they’re right. Your goal in your first session should be survival, not stardom.
The main thing that you have to understand is how two-party politics has weakened your office. Just six years ago, Bob Bullock was an all-powerful lieutenant governor presiding over a Democrat-dominated Senate. No one dared to cross him. But as Republicans gained numerical strength and eventually a majority over the next four years, GOP senators realized—and so did Bullock—that the lite guv’s power over Senate procedures sprang from custom, not law. If, say, Bullock did not give the GOP enough committee chairs, GOP senators could, if they wished, rewrite the Senate rules, strip him of his powers, and name the chairs themselves. They could do the same to you, and many of them want to. It’s not personal. It’s just hard to resist power that is there for the taking. So while nothing has changed—you have all the powers a lieutenant governor has always had, at least for now—everything has changed, because the secret of the lieutenant governor’s vulnerability is out in the open. Bullock knew it; that’s one reason why he stepped down. Perception is everything in politics, and the perception among many senators is that the Senate no longer needs a heavy-handed lieutenant governor. Forty-eight states—all but Texas and Georgia—get along with a weak one or none at all. Why should Texas be different?
The worst thing you could do under such circumstances is throw your weight around. Yet soon after you were elected, a rumor swept through the Capitol that you were thinking about taking a chairmanship away from Senator David Sibley of Waco (a respected veteran Republican and a close ally of Governor Bush’s) because you deemed him insufficiently enthusiastic about your campaign. The rumor was followed by spin from your defenders that nothing of the sort was ever contemplated and that the rumor must have been started by your enemies. More likely, it was the product of some loose talk by your friends. Just think of this episode as a refresher course in one of the fundamental lessons of politics: Your friends can hurt you a lot worse than your enemies can.
And speaking of friends, one of yours is already causing you some problems. I’m talking about school-voucher advocate Jim Leininger of San Antonio. This little-known figure, who made his fortune developing a hospital bed, has become the most extraordinary campaign contributor in Texas history. Others give thousands; he gives millions. Leininger gave you a line of credit reportedly in the seven digits—money you used to match Sharp on television in the closing days of the campaign. Payback time started with your “late train” fundraiser on December 8. The “late train” refers to the last chance for lobbyists who supported a losing candidate to get on board with the winner. What made your late train different—although your defenders deny it—is that your fundraisers, instead of allowing lobbyists to decide for themselves how much to donate, told them how much their tickets for the late train would cost. (The most expensive seat, for $100,000, was reserved for the Texas Farm Bureau, with whom you got crosswise as ag commissioner; they elected to miss the train.) This hardball tactic engendered a lot of ill will, especially since lobbyists knew that their quotas were set for the purpose of paying back Leininger.
The question that ought to worry you is, How, as commissioner of agriculture, did I allow my relationship with the Farm Bureau to deteriorate to the point where I lost its support? You say that you had to tell them no now and then, and they didn’t take it well, but a skilled politician should have been able to avoid total estrangement from his core constituency. You’re a great electoral politician, Rick, but you’ve got a lot to learn about the inside game (which is all the lieutenant governor’s job is) and not much time to learn it. You are in a highly visible job now, and you have to start worrying about appearances—and that doesn’t mean how good you look on TV. Owing Leininger a fortune looks bad, and it’s going to look worse if you get heavily involved in trying to pass vouchers. Partisan Democrats who oppose them will have a field day attacking you.
The best advice I can give you is to let the Senate work its will. Your biggest strength is that you are an easy person to like. Use it. Get as many senators as possible, Democrats and Republicans, on your side, offer them help, and ask them for advice. And whatever you do, don’t try to be a model of Machiavellianism (or Bob Bullock). Remember, all you want to do is survive. If you’re lucky—and Bush is too—your first session will be your only session, and you will move up to governor. Then you can start worrying about the rumor that Kay Bailey Hutchison intends to come back to Texas in 2002 to run for governor, regardless of who else is in the race.
To: Speaker of the House Pete Laney
From: Don Key, Democratic consultant
YOU’RE THE LAST SURVIVOR, THE ONLY Texas Democrat with a statewide portfolio. The opportunity to become the spokesman for the party is yours by default. Your West Texas accent alone is enough to get ordinary people to identify with you. You could position yourself to make a run for statewide office—say, lieutenant governor—in 2002. But what’s the use of telling you this? It would be completely out of character. You’re an inside player who shuns the limelight, has no higher ambitions to pursue, and doesn’t have an ideological agenda—the exact opposite of Rick Perry.
So let’s concentrate on the upcoming session. To anyone who looks at just the numbers, it would appear that your fourth term as Speaker will be a rough one. The Democrats’ margin in the House has dropped from fourteen seats to six (78—72) as the result of last November’s elections. Not to worry: It’s going to be a breeze. The Republicans have spent the past four years—and millions of dollars—trying to win a majority of House seats (76 of 150). They thought they had it this time. But something went awry: Bush’s coattails didn’t extend down to legislative races. Now the steam has gone out of the GOP campaign. Its chief architect, Tom Craddick of Midland, cannot serve another term as chairman of the House Republican Caucus. That job is slated to pass to Kenny Marchant of Carrollton or David Swinford of Dumas, both of whom have milder personalities than Craddick does. In another changing of the guard that should produce less partisan rancor, the leadership of the bipartisan Conservative Coalition has passed from a fiercely ideological Republican to a rural Democrat, Bob Turner of Voss. Unfortunately, turnover has hurt you as well: You lost four top lieutenants to retirement. You’re going to have to rebuild your A team.
It has always been your style to play your cards close to the chest, and that won’t change. You don’t exercise power in any visible way, but strange maladies seem to inflict bills that you don’t like—long delays, susceptibility to points of order, and other small but often fatal afflictions.This knowledge has to worry Rick Perry. You have never liked the idea of school vouchers, and if you don’t want Perry’s pet project to pass, chances are, it will have a wreck somewhere along the line—and it will look like an accident.
One more thing: What about all that money? As the only Democrat left standing, can you keep the entire surplus from being eaten up by Republican tax cuts, with nothing left for teachers, nursing homes, and other supplicants? Let me put it this way. In the eighties, before Perry switched parties and you two were Democratic House colleagues from rural West Texas, you were never close. You’re not likely to get any closer this session.
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