Why did you decide to write this book? Who, in your opinion, should read it?
I wrote this book for the same reason I ran for governor — to try to make Texas a better place. There are wider ramifications as well. The children of the world have always looked up to Texas as the spiritual home of the American cowboy. Texas is the place where we learn how to ride, shoot straight, and tell the truth. That’s what it’s supposed to be, but it’s not what it’s become. I believe apathy, lack of leadership, and politics as usual have been responsible for tarnishing the lone star. I want to make her shine again.You Can Lead a Politician to Water, but You Can’t Make Him Think is for anybody who believes in the Alamo of the mind. It is for Texans, non-Texans, and spiritual Texans, for people who got here as fast as they could and those who are still thinking about it. Can we use some of the ideas in this book that are already working very successfully in other places? Of course we can and we should. So what’s stopping us? Politics, folks. Politics and politicians who no longer respect us, just as we no longer respect them. I can’t think of a living politician today who truly inspires me. Most people I talk to feel the same way. It doesn’t matter if you’re a young person or an old person. If you’re open to new ideas, I hope sincerely that you’ll read this book. We can only find that place above politics if we look for it together. If you were to start a new political party what would you call it? Maybe the armadillo party?
Armadillo party smells about right from here –as I've said from my recent political experience; if a candidate is not part of the 'Crips' or the 'Bloods' (Republicans or Democrats) there's no real chance to win - at least not in Texas. Is it far to say voter apathy is one of the main reasons you lost? You sum it up well here:
“I’m for the little fellers, not the Rockefellers, and believe me, there are lots more of us than there are of them. But, in order to bring about fundamental change, the little fellers have got to vote. Thus far, they haven’t?”
Voter apathy is the political cancer of our time. In Texas, only 28% voted in the last governor’s race, a certain death knell to any independent candidate. But if we’d had mandatory voting as they have in Australia, or voting on weekends to maximize the vote, or same day voter registration to get more young people and new voters into the process, the story would have been very different. The irony and the tragedy of low voter turnout is that it suits the politicians perfectly, though they’ll never admit it. Frankly, we deserve the lackluster leadership we’re getting. Anytime the voter response is as low as 28% it enables the powers behind the two political parties to over-ride the will of the people. This is what George Washington warned us about. He was the good George W.
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