Ben Barnes to be signing "Barn Burning Barn Building" in Brownwood soon !
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Sunday June 4, 2006
News
Ben Barnes examines politics then and now in his new book
By Curtis Elliott — Brownwood Bulletin
Ben Barnes shares a laugh last week at a book-signing. His tour took him to Abilene and Comanche. Photo contributed
Ben Barnes, once this area’s representative in the Texas House, who was then elected lieutenant governor before losing a bid for governor, revisits his experiences in a book he has been promoting this month.
Barnes held book-signings in Abilene and Comanche last week on tour to promote the book, “Barn Burning Barn Building: Tales of a Political Life, from LBJ to George W. Bush and Beyond.” Barnes wrote the book with Lisa Dickey.
After a fast start up the political ladder in the 1960s, Barnes found himself a member of the Texas House of Representatives at 22, the youngest speaker of the House at 26, and then lieutenant governor at 30. Even though some say Barnes was a prospect for the presidency, the life-long Democrat had another goal.
“I didn’t think about the presidency,” Barnes said in a phone interview. “People around me talked about it, but I refused to seriously think about it. I had my eyes on the governorship of Texas.”
After Barnes left public office, he returned to Brownwood and became a partner of Herman Bennett, who died April 7.
“I feel fortunate that I was able to help with bringing in the Kohler and 3M plants,” Barnes said. 3M celebrated its 40th anniversary last year, Kohler announced its plans for a plant in the early 1970s.
“Brownwood has accomplished so much. There’s a lot about Brownwood in my book.”
Faced with the controversy of the Vietnam War, the decade of the 1960s was a challenging time for many politicians. President Lyndon Johnson, one of Barnes’ mentors, announced he would not run for re-election in 1968, a decision made in large part because of the war’s unpopularity. The presidency seemed wide open before Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated, Barnes said.
“Robert Kennedy would not have had war on his campaign, but I don’t know if he would’ve won,” Barnes said. “He still had to carry Texas to beat (Richard) Nixon.”
Nixon won the presidency that year, and, despite failing to get the country out of Vietnam during his first term, won re-election in 1972.
“Nixon didn’t have a strong opponent for his second term,” Barnes said. “He only had George McGovern, and McGovern was a weak candidate. He only won one state.”
In his book, Barnes claims that Nixon’s White House destroyed him. Nixon, along with the political fallout from the Sharpstown stock-fraud scandal, combined to defeat him in the governor’s race.
“I recovered some tapes of Nixon talking to (U.S. Attorney General John) Mitchell in 1972 in which they talked about me,” Barnes said. Mitchell was the first U.S. attorney general to be convicted, in 1975, of illegal activities and imprisoned — all in connection with the Watergate break-in and cover-up.
“Nixon was afraid of me,” Barnes said. “The Republicans wanted to discredit me as much as they could.”
Barnes made national headlines in 2004 when he announced during the presidential campaign that he got George W. Bush into the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam era, alllowing him to avoid serving overseas.
“I made a call for Bush,” Barnes said. “But I also made calls for a lot of other young men. I regret those calls. I am ashamed of what I have done.”
Two other concerns that Barnes addresses in his book are bipartisanship and young people in politics.
“Very bitter partisanship has grabbed a hold of government,” Barnes said.
“We need better cooperation. If the United States falls, it won’t be the enemy outside, it will be from within.”
Barnes said objectivity is very important in a political campaign, and referred to former U.S. Senator Lloyd Bentsen, who died May 23 and whose funeral Barnes attended.
“Bentsen is a great case of bipartisanship. I encouraged him to run for U.S. senator,” Barnes said.
Barnes said he also feels that young people are not very interested in becoming Democrats.
“We need more young people in the Democratic Party,” he said. “We have not done an adequate job in recruiting them. Some have turned to the Republican Party.”
source: http://www.brownwoodbulletin.com/articles/2006/06/04/news/news04.txt
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