Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos: Is Ben Barnes the Last Moderate Texan Democrat?

**Andrew Keen** (0:00)
Hello, my name is Andrew Keen. Welcome to Keen On America, the daily interview show about the United States.
Hello, everybody. I have to admit that my famous political remark, American political remark comes from Texas. Everyone had associated it with Ann Richards, although apparently it was originally made by Jim Hightower. It says that there is nothing in the middle of the road, but yellow stripes and dead armadillos, suggesting, of course, that anyone in the middle of politics is going to get run over in that great state of Texas, at least. And I'm thrilled that we have a Texan politician, a man of the center in when he makes. Ben Barnes, I'm not going to give away your age, Ben, but you're certainly older than I am and older than most of our listeners. You've been around Texan politics for 50 or 60 years.

**Ben Barnes** (1:20)
I may be older than everybody.

**Andrew Keen** (1:22)
You're older than everyone, but certainly you have a beautiful voice and you're wiser than everyone, too. And you put all that wisdom into a new book, Get It Done, Seven Decades of Lessons from a Political Legend, which is, of course, Ben Barnes. He's talking to us from Nantucket. He normally lives in Austin, but it's a bit sticky there. Ben, congratulations on the book and the life.
What about that Jim Hightower phrase about there being nothing in the middle of the road, but yellow stripes and dead armadillos? Have you survived for seven decades, Ben, by being in the middle of the road?

**Ben Barnes** (2:00)
Well, that was a very articulate phrase that my friend Jim Hightower came up with.
You got to remember that that was in an era in Texas politics when we didn't have anyone but Democrats in office. We had different shades of Democrats. But while I presided, I served as Speaker of the House and Lieutenant Governor, so I presided over both legislative bodies. Out of the 31 senators, there were one Republican, and out of the 150 House members, there were three Republicans. So the Republicans were very, very minority party, and so it was really the Democratic Party. But Jim Hightower represented the left side of the party in Texas, and he campaigned and lived on the left side of the center line. That was a great phrase when he was trying to solicit people to join him and his movement. It's a lot like the movement now of the Democratic Socialist. Jim was a good public servant and a good man, but he was much further to the left than the Democratic Party in Texas was at that time.

**Andrew Keen** (3:12)
So what are your politics, Ben, over these seven decades? Have they remained consistent or can they only be understood in Texan terms rather than national terms?

**Ben Barnes** (3:24)
I have remained a Democrat and I'm one of the few people that was friends with a lot of the people that were very prominent Democrats in Texas. People like President Lyndon Johnson, Vice President John Garner, people like Sam Rayburn and the Texas delegation that had so much power.

**Andrew Keen** (3:47)
And John Connally, of course.

**Ben Barnes** (3:49)
Then John Connally, John Connally switched parties, Lyndon Johnson never switched parties. And I've remained a Democrat and I have supported the party through the years.
I have done it with some enthusiasm and sometimes more enthusiasm depending on the person. I raised money in the southwestern part of the United States for John Kerry and was very active in his campaign. Of course, the first campaign I ever worked in was the Kennedy-Johnson campaign. I campaigned very hard for Senator Kennedy and Senator Johnson. And that was my first entry into politics.
I got elected to our state legislature when I was a freshman in law school. So I was just 21 years old when I went to the state legislature. And then I was elected Speaker when I was 26 and Lieutenant Governor when I was 30 So I spent a lot of time in the early part of my life and being very, very active in politics. I've still remained active, but I have had a lot of other things that has taken up my time, including serving on the Johnson Library Board and helping put together the Public Policy School, the Lyndon Johnson Public Policy School that has campuses at the University of Texas in Austin and in Washington. And I'm very proud of that school. And I've actually done some teaching at that school. And I've enjoyed all of that tremendously.

**Andrew Keen** (5:10)
Ben, you were talking about Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, of course, assassinated in Dallas. Were you there?