Newsweek’s writeup on the life of Ann Richards was a nice tribute, but it could have profited from some fact checking. “Richards was elected governor of Texas in 1990, upsetting the good-old-boy incumbent, Clayton Williams,” it said. I’m sure that comes as news to Bill Clements, who served as governor for the previous four years. And the line, “Democrats complained that Bush’s message boiled down to ‘gays will take away your guns,'” is clever, but what everybody remembers about the race is that Bush focused relentlessly on “four things” (none of which had anything to do with guns or gays): education reform, tort reform, juvenile justice reform, and welfare reform. When asked about what his fifth priority would be, he replied, “Pass the first four things.” Certainly Richards’ veto of a proposed referendum on the right to carry a concealed weapon hurt her in rural Texas, but it was not central to Bush’s message.