Barn Burning Barn Building: Lessons of Lone Star Politics that Can Improve Our Country's Future (review)

Abstract

362Southwestern Historical QuarterlyJanuary Barn BurningBarn Building: Lessons ofLoneStarPolitics that Can Improve Our Country 's Future. By Ben Barnes with Lisa Dickey. (Albany, Texas: Bright Sky Press, 2006. Pp. 256. Illustrations, bibliography, index. ISBN 1931721718. $24.95.) The English essayist Cyril Connolly once wrote—bitterly—"whom die gods wish to destroy, they first call promising." Few political careers have begun as promisingly as diat of Ben Barnes, who became Speaker of die Texas House of Representatives at age twenty-six and was elected lieutenant governor at age thirty. Yet by 1972, at age thirty-four, Barnes finished out of the running in a divisive Democratic gubernatorial primary dominated by the Sharpstown scandal and calls for reform. While Barnes was never implicated in that scandal, after twelve years in office he was widely viewed as a symbol of the tainted Democratic Party establishment in Austin. In his own words, after 1972, "my career in elective politics was over." Barn Burning Barn Building is an engaging memoir of Barnes's tumultuous years in elective office—1961 to 1973. The tide is loosely derived from a political maxim attributed to Sam Rayburn—any mule can kick down a barn, but it takes a real carpenter to build one. The author, who cites Rayburn as an early influence, observed or participated in a remarkable series of events of state and national significance, including the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination, die chaotic ig68 Democratic Convention, and the "assisted" enrollment ofyoung George W. Bush in the Texas Air National Guard during the peak of die Vietnam draft. While these episodes make for fascinating reading, die book's mostvaluable contributions are the detailed recountings of Barnes's close working relationships with Texas giants Lyndon Johnson, John Connally, and BarbaraJordan, and of his adversarial relationship with Richard Nixon, as well as his dealings with the Nixon-eraJustice Department and many lesser lights ofTexas politics. The audior tells his story in a frank, opinionated, and anecdotal style. Only one chapter is footnoted, and Barnes relies sparingly on secondary sources—one exception being a 1969 front-page story in die Wall StreetJournal that deemed him "Heir Apparent" to dieJohnson legacy, and anodier being a transcribed White House tape showing Nixon's determination to block diat succession. Given Barnes's central role in die Texas politics of his era, diis anecdotal format serves die audior and reader well. Barnes says litde about some controversial episodes of his career, including his business ventures after 1973. Nor does he dwell on his personal life outside of politics. He briefly discusses the remunerative, subsidized investments that kept him solvent while living on a legislator's meager pay, noting that this was common practice in that freewheeling, pre-reform era. Barnes's memoirs essentially end with his 1972 primary defeat, but he closes with two briefchapters lamenting the destructive, overly partisan state of contemporary politics and recommending measures to foster moderation, integrity, and fairness in Austin and Washington. Barnes, who has remained a loyal Democrat, clearly understands this subject matter, and many of his observations on die perceived excesses of recent one-party rule (written in 2005) have been borne out by die political upheavals of 2006. Barn Burningshould provide useful raw material for serious historians ofTexas politics in tiieJohnson-Connally era, but it does not really resolve a central question 2??8Book Reviews363 about die controversial audior's own role in history: will Ben Barnes be remembered primarily as the promising young phenomenon who became a protégé ofJohnson and Connally, or will he be recognized as a force in his own right in the events and transformations he chronicles? That answer will await a work ofgreater depth and broader perspective. AustinJames E. Cousar Mestizo inAmerica: Generations ofMexicanEthnicity in tL·Suburban Southwest. ByThomas Macias. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2006. Pp. 194. Tables, graphs, appendices, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 0816525048. $45.00, cloth. ISBN 0816525056. $19.95, paper.) Mestizo in America examines die social integration ofthe U.S. Mexican community from 1965 to the present. While its sources are both qualitative and quantitative , its richest source for quantitative data is the Current Population Survey (CPS) from igg4 to 2002. In addition, the author interviewed more...