Texans like to say “Everything is bigger in Texas,” and lately it looks like mistakes are bigger there, too. Many people love Texans’ boisterous exceptionalism, but there is nothing to love about the way their leaders have been letting them down.
Gov. Greg Abbott caught the whole country by surprise last week when he announced, “It is now time to open Texas 100%.” Abbott tried to sound like a no-nonsense leader, but it was pure nonsense to the medical community, and the state’s top physicians pushed back.
“Our staff is tired and we’re still in the midst of a third surge,” Dr. Marc Boom, president and CEO of Houston Methodist, told NBC News. “Now everybody is contemplating a fourth surge of infections.”
Abbott can tell us to butt out, because Texas can do what it wants. But if we have learned anything from this plague, it is that we are better when we fight this together. And just as we are closing in on it, no one wants to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Abbott’s decision to open up his state did draw attention away from another recent colossal failure of Texas state government. A snowstorm nearly collapsed the power grid across the state. Dozens died, millions of Texans had no heat or water, and property damage will be in the billions as pipes burst across the state.
It’s just more of what can happen when Texas or any state goes it alone, experts be damned. Texas’ leaders insisted on a privately owned and barely regulated power grid to serve the state. As they were warned, profit trumped the resiliency and redundancy that keep public utilities running, and a snowstorm laid them low.
All of us will be paying for that mistake, because they are still part of our family. FEMA showed up with supplies and funds and know-how, and President Biden signed a disaster declaration that will provide taxpayer grants and subsidized loans to our fellow Americans.
If there must be a poster boy for all this bad leadership, no one could be better than Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. When the power grid failed and Texans began to freeze, Cruz gathered up his family and headed for Mexico’s sunny beaches.
There’s video of Cruz rushing through the airport with a police escort, looking very much like a guy who is cutting the line on the sinking Titanic to sneak onto a lifeboat. Caught red-handed, Cruz skulked back to Texas and tried to blame his wife, his kids and the media for his bad behavior.
There have been many great Southern leaders who did better. One of them was former North Carolina Gov. Terry Sanford, who was featured in a recent Washington Post story by John Drescher to mark the 60th anniversary of Sanford’s inauguration.
A former paratrooper at the Battle of the Bulge, Sanford “thought leaders should lead, and he was willing to take political risks to move his state forward.” On segregation, the toughest issue of his time, he did not bow to power brokers or bend to the misguided will of his constituents.
“You’re not elected to be a poll-taker,” Sanford once said. “You’re elected to provide some leadership.” And that is just as true today.
