Posted on 11/14/2002 6:18:33 AM PST by stainlessbanner
It was good to see a smile on Gov. Roy Barnes' face in Wednesday's paper. It looked a bit forced, but he's a courteous and disciplined man, and grace in adversity is probably largely a question of manners.
He lost the election massively, and it's easy to forget his strengths in the clatter and dust. He actually tried to do some needed things, despite the way critics have demonized him. He's very smart. He loves Georgia and knows the state well -- and he's shrewd about history, government, banking, law, the machinery and lore of politics and other things. He can be a charming storyteller and public speaker, and he has always tried hard to simplify his message. That can be one of the best things about politics, as well as one of the worst.
As for weaknesses, Barnes lacks dramatic ones. He's too perennially middle-aged, perhaps. He has played rough sometimes when questioned about his finances or his motives. But he doesn't have Zell Miller's fury or Bill Clinton's inability to keep his zipper zipped or any number of other politicians' greed, envy, etc. His critics' vision of him as "King Roy" -- arrogant and dictatorial -- has been overdrawn, I think.
He sees himself as having lost to old forces that he honorably opposed, such as those who liked the neo-Confederate 1956 Georgia state flag, and those who disliked the way he changed it.
That was a killer. But in fact he faced several forces that were pretty much beyond his control. They included a pro-Republican national mood, the continuing racial polarization of the two parties in the South, Georgia's economic recession, continuing embarrassing news about the state's public schools -- even the screwups of pollsters, who saw him running ahead despite all the "undecideds" who wouldn't take a call from a pollster if you paid them.
Barnes was a victim, too, of the gigantic inertia of metro Atlanta's traffic and smog. Poke it, as he did, and watch out.
He confessed to making mistakes, but it will probably be years before we learn exactly what he thinks they were and how he feels about them.
Notoriously, he collected enemies. Flaggers, teachers, opponents of the Northern Arc highway -- despite all their differences, their criticisms snowballed.
Did he simply take his stands, then, and get shot down? Not exactly.
On the flag, he tried a secret, business-supported end run. The result was a decal-stuck mediocrity that failed to unify the state. As for the Northern Arc, Barnes ran hot and cold on that. It was never clear why he backed the road. He alienated people who might well have voted for him. He underestimated the opposition. And the highway's key backers turned out to be the same old highway lobby.
He played power politics so relentlessly that even some Democratic supporters recoiled. There was just so much money, so much propaganda, so much negative research.
Barnes erected elaborate alternative structures of power that never worked as expected. They ended up aggravating citizens of several sorts: the entrenched interests they opposed, but also good-government types who saw a troubling new concentration of power in his machinery.
No doubt he was counting on another term to sort things out. He didn't get it. In a sense, one of Georgia's most promising governors really did get crushed by the burden of Southern history. In another sense he blew it, and the machine stopped.
Dear Roy, I love you and miss you
I just wonder if it was sealed with a kiss and sent with a box of candy.
The writer says the "King Roy" label was overstated, then makes a statement to show it was true.
This, in the end, was the reason Barnes was defeated. Every issue talked about comes down to Barnes' overuse of power (almost dictorial at times.)
Given the fact that the Democratic Lt. Gov. was reelected, it is hard to blame Barnes defeat on a "Republican wave".
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