Five lessons to elevate politics
Paul Burka was like the politicians he covered insofar as neither were at a loss for words. Surely the former editor of Texas Monthly who passed away in August and moderated numerous Texas debates would be chagrined by the national trend away from candidate debates.
If partisans on both sides agreed on one thing after the single, hour-long Texas gubernatorial debate, it was that both candidates — Gov. Greg Abbott and former Congressman Beto O’Rourke — partook in a robust and respectful exchange of ideas that we need more of. Unfortunately though, there were no debates for the important offices of lieutenant governor, attorney general and Harris County judge, and the prospect of no debates in the 2024 general presidential election. Voters are largely left with a barrage of 30-second ads rather than having the benefit of an unscripted, extended discussion of policy issues.
Fortunately, Burka’s remarkable legacy of journalism provides several lessons that can help elevate our politics, temper our polarization and promote the vigorous exchange of ideas, whether on the campaign trail or on college campuses.
Workhorses vs. showboats
As you would expect of a journalist responsible for compiling a list of best and worst lawmakers, he was sometimes accused of bias. He certainly had the one we all have, which is being attracted to people who are like us. Many tributes from colleagues and friends emphasized his modesty and a relentless ethic unforgettably demonstrated by perhaps setting the record for the most pens in a shirt pocket at a Little League game.
So is it any wonder he praised politicians who did the hard work of legislating rather than showboating? The cable news and social media outrage cycle as well the new realities of fundraising, particularly on the federal level, now arguably reward the showboats much more than in years past.
Burka knew and conveyed that the process wasn’t supposed to be about the lawmakers
themselves but about those they represent, and the list’s labeling of ineffective lawmakers as “furniture” was not out of spite but of out of concern for constituents being well represented.
As a former student of Burka’s at the University of Texas at Austin, I hope one recent bipartisan effort gave him comfort in his final weeks. The unveiling of the Texas House report on Uvalde — the two lawmakers and former judge who compiled it, and the House speaker who appointed them, did not take a victory lap for fulfilling their obligations under the worst of circumstances. It wasn’t about them, but rather about what was owed to the families, the Uvalde community and the people of Texas.
Keep your promises
Burka garnered predictably mixed reviews for his largely positive assessments of George W. Bush in his campaign for governor and while holding that office. Burka admired Bush’s discipline as he relentlessly focused on reforms in welfare, education and juvenile justice in his 1994 campaign and then proceeded to deliver on them, partly by cultivating an alliance with legendary Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock that is almost unthinkable today.
Regardless of his views on those policy priorities, Burka saw a virtuous feedback loop in which public trust was reinforced when a politician did in office what they promised to do on the campaign trail.
Leadership, not pandering
While Burka praised elected officials for actions that matched their statements, he didn’t think they should stick
their finger in the wind to decide which policies to support. The course syllabus for his UT seminar included everything from Aristotle’s “Politics” to William Riordan’s “The Plunkitt of Tammany Hall,” forcing us as students to think about the tensions between leadership and representation; constituent service and rewarding cronies.
Back in 1992, he attributed the initial success of billionaire business magnate Ross Perot’s presidential campaign to voters’ frustration with a political system in which “polling has replaced judgment, pandering has replaced policy, and attacking the opposition has replaced debate.”
Today, such laments about the landscape three decades ago seem almost quaint. However, there are still examples of elected officials who tell their supporters what they don’t want to hear. As perhaps the most conservative House member who voted to certify the 2020 presidential election, Texas Congressman Chip Roy said in his remarks at the time that he was doing it “even if it signs my political death warrant.” Roy, who overcame a bout with cancer, recognized — as did Burka — that the elected official who is willing to lose his power is the one who has the freedom to make the right choice.
Expertise counts
Burka understood the complexity of public policy challenges and he relished the Texas Legislature’s relatively bipartisan traditions compared with many other states. This allows the expertise of members of both parties to be better utilized. In dozens of states, only members of the majority party chair committees; in some it is virtually impossible for members of the minority party to pass bills.
Given that Texas has a citizen legislature that only meets regularly once every two years, cultivated expertise is particularly important. Agree or not with their policies, no one doubts Senate criminal justice chairman and attorney John Whitmire, a Democrat, is much more familiar with the criminal justice system than most lawmakers and Sen. Robert Nichols, a Republican and an engineer who previously headed the Texas Transportation Commission, is well-suited to chair the Transportation Committee.
Exchange of ideas
Burka’s legacy speaks to the need to confront illiberalism on both the left and right. In a 1997 column following troubling remarks on race and academic achievement by prolific conservative UT law professor Lino Graglia, who himself passed earlier this year, Burka noted the importance of the First Amendment amid calling for Graglia to be terminated lest he suffer an even worse fate, as police safeguarded the part of the campus containing his office.
Efforts to banish Graglia were part of broader threats to academic freedom and free speech that have continued to this day, but with an ideological twist. When I was a UT law student more than two decades ago, a professor on the hiring committee whose office was adorned with a Che Guevara portrait lamented that there is no way another conservative could be hired given the stance of others on the committee. In 1999, a speaker I invited to campus as head of the UT Law Federalist Society was shouted down and could not complete his remarks.
Fast forward to 2016 when Graglia retired and I learned that conservative donors were assembling funds to hire a right-of-center professor after no professor was willing to succeed Graglia as faculty sponsor for the Federalist Society, the journal Texas Review of Law & Politics and Christian Legal Society.
While the current dean has displayed a genuine and laudable commitment to intellectual diversity, my experience is indicative of research showing that for years at campuses across the country ideological orthodoxies have been stifling.
However, one doesn’t need Burka’s brilliance to know two wrongs don’t make a right. Unfortunately, a new Florida law threatens to censor professors who teach about concepts that might trigger right-wing fragilities. Yet in the debate over critical race theory, many in this camp acknowledged there was nothing objectionable about a law student choosing a course on this topic, insisting it was only inappropriate if it was taught at the K-12 level.
Burka wasn’t afraid of vigorous battles of ideas. A native Galvestoni an, he not only moderated debates but grappled with conflicting views as both a journalist and professor. I think he would agree that free speech and intellectual freedom “for me but not for thee” is what we in Texas say is all hat and no cattle. The illiberal impulse at both extremes threatens to create echo chambers where provocative views are shut out and the capacity Burka admired in legislators to disagree without being disagreeable atrophies.
Too many believe that for them to win, another person or team must lose. Rediscovering the virtues of pluralism means recognizing that life and politics are often not zero-sum games.
In his final column in the Rice Thresher in 1963, a hosanna to the Rice football team’s perennially valiant but often futile attempts to compete with the Texas Longhorn juggernaut, Burka quoted sportswriter Grantland Rice’s observation: “It matters not whether you won or lost, but how you played the game.” Burka expected both our elected officials and each of us to abide by a sense of fair play and a willingness to hear out and work with others, even when we disagree. It shouldn’t take a Hail Mary pass for candidates to share the same stage or to guarantee intellectual freedom on college campuses.
In asking for Rice to beat Texas, he was usually asking for too much, but in seeking a willingness to engage with those we disagree let’s hope he was not.