He had a gun too.
Ever see a picture of Heinrich Himmler?
Himmler
Maddox
Hmmmmm........
Walt
Posted on 05/19/2003 6:43:37 AM PDT by WhiskeyPapa
Flag wasn't the root of Barnes' fall
It's fun to see a myth take shape, to watch as it emerges unformed from the early fog of facts and then be polished and sanded and finally cast in bronze, so that in time it seems as real and solid as a statue.
Consider, for example, the myth of Roy Barnes and the Georgia flag.
Make no mistake, the former governor fully deserved the Kennedy Profile in Courage Award he recently accepted at Harvard. His decision to engineer a change in the Georgia flag, despite the risk it posed, was a true act of leadership. And the fact that it probably cost Barnes his political career makes the story all the better.
"I don't think my decision required extraordinary courage," Barnes said in accepting the award. "There simply comes a time in the life of every politician when he must choose between a course that is popular . . . or one that is right, but could lead to defeat."
It's only natural that Barnes would embrace the storyline of himself as victim/hero. It gives his defeat a glow in the Georgia history books that it would not otherwise have. His antagonists in the story, the flaggers, have an equally large interest in seeing the story told that way, because it gives them a political credibility they would otherwise lack.
Before the myth is allowed to harden into history, though, a little reality check seems in order. Because the truth is, Barnes should never have been in a situation that allowed the flaggers to beat him.
And for that, he has only himself to blame.
Going into the race, Barnes had every advantage. He had served a very productive first term in office and had raised $20 million. He knew the politics of this state as well as anyone. And in Sonny Perdue, he had drawn an opponent with no statewide experience, no real platform, no name recognition and very little money to overcome those obstacles.
But during his term in office, Barnes also had acquired a nickname, "King Roy," a title that he earned just as surely as he earned that Kennedy award. He and his staff, most notably chief of staff Bobby Kahn and staff counsel Joe Young, enjoyed wielding power. They enjoyed it too much. Given a choice between winning nice and winning in a way that would remind people who was top dog, they always chose the second course.
The stories of their arm-twisting are legion and are told by Democrats and Republicans, businesspeople and environmentalists, politicians, teachers and legislators. Why use flattery when a threat would do? Why merely ask for help if you could demand it? Why let someone swallow something distasteful if you could shove it down their throat?
Repeated enough times, in enough places, with enough people, that style builds a broad-based resentment that $20 million can't obliterate. It also fed perfectly into the flaggers' complaint -- when they charged that King Roy had rammed the flag change through unfairly, the claim rang a bell with too many other people around the state who had seen similar behavior on other issues.
In that kind of political environment, the placid, genial and unassuming Perdue turned out to be the perfect arrow to strike Barnes in his weak spot.
The contrast between Barnes and Perdue has become even more striking now that Perdue has been in office for a few months. While Barnes and Kahn took their approach from Machiavelli, who argued that it is better for a leader to be feared than loved, Perdue has come into office touting the much softer approach of motivational author Stephen Covey.
"To value oneself and, at the same time, subordinate oneself to higher purposes and principles is the paradoxical essence of highest humanity and the foundation of effective leadership," Covey wrote in "Principle Centered Leadership," the book that Perdue required all of his department heads to read.
To a political hard-baller like Barnes, the knowledge that he lost to a Covey acolyte preaching stuff like that is probably grating. 'Tis a far, far better thing to blame it on the flag.
The flag issue standing alone would not have sunk Barnes, had he otherwise been a straight-ahead person and a decent governor. (It doggone near sunk Zell Miller though, not that long ago.)
But Barnes hacked off just about EVERYBODY in the state for one reason or another. This article correctly notes that his "gotcha 'cause I can" management style alienated so many groups that he was doomed to lose. He thought he could strong arm enough votes to win anyway, but he couldn't. Georgia has a long tradition of disliking those who display their power too blatantly.
That said, there is a core group of voters for whom the flag issue was indeed the last straw. But not all of them were SCVs, reenactors, or unreconstructed Confederates. A goodly number were annoyed because of the METHOD Barnes used to strong-arm the vote on the flag -- no warning, no opportunity for legislators to consult their constituents, and many, many overt threats to cut funding and projects in legislators' home districts.
While I don't normally use such language, the only way to describe Barnes adequately is that he is a mean bastard. And mean bastards don't stay in public office long in GA, unless they disguise their meanness very carefully.
I appreciate your comments.
Hmmmmm....was Lester Maddox disguising his meanness very carefully when he chased those black people out of a restaurant with an ax handle? ;-)
Walt
I disagree with Bookman about Barnes deserving the Profiles and Courage Award. It didn't take any courage to work out back door deals.
But what did Barnes have to gain by changing the flag?
He may have thought he had a lock on the election, but he could have left well enough alone on the flag.
Walt
The media has demonized Gov. Maddox for years, quite unfairly in my opinion. While he was an old-time segregationist, he was never a hater and he tried to be fair. He always maintained that black citizens of Georgia should have a voice in government - and that was QUITE unusual for then and there. He was the first Georgia governor to appoint an African-American to statewide office -- none of the supposedly more enlightened governors who preceded him had ever managed to walk the talk. And he left office poorer than he went in - never took a dime that didn't belong to him. He was in the job by accident and he was undereducated for the job, but he did his best and we have had far worse governors who did NOT try to be fair to all.
Perhaps the best indicator is that his employees, white and black, loved the man. He's very old and very sick now, his beloved wife died recently and it sort of took the heart out of him.
Would you define the elements of "segregation"?
You don't think that one of them surely is hated of others?
Walt
Found this:
"Lester Maddox, wielding gun and ax handle, chases blacks from his Pickrick restaurant in early July. Among those ordered to desegregate after the U.S. Supreme Court upholds non-discrimination in public accomodations later that month, Maddox closes the restaurant in August."
http://www.city-directory.com/Overview/history/history7.htm
Walt
Most of them grew up with black kids and had cordial relationships (within their segregationist framework) with African-Americans, so they certainly didn't hate them.
In fact, the two worst racists of the hating variety that I have EVER met were a Vermonter and a Michigander. And it remains very strange to me how segregated most of the North and Northeast is -- in fact far more segregated than the South. I was in Muskegon, Michigan for a week once, and the only black person I saw the whole time was a one-legged water skier in the boat show. And he wasn't from around there.
I was here at the time. He talked a lot and waved an axe handle around but he never took a swing at anybody and nobody took it seriously. (If you'd ever seen the man, you'd realize how ridiculous this is, because he's a little guy, maybe 130 pounds wringing wet. With his thick glasses and his kinda squeaky voice, he's not really very scary.)
Cleland voted against the Boy Scouts in the Senate, then tried to deny it. He was caught in the lie and it made a bunch of folks mad. But folks were already mad at him for a lot of reasons - none of which had anything to do with whether or not he is a nice guy (he is). But he is way too liberal for Georgia and has been for years - been running mostly as a disabled veteran for a long time, without doing too much for the state in Washington. It was past time for him to be put out to pasture.
But that's about the ONLY thing that Barnes didn't hack somebody off about. Just to pick controversial issues at random - teacher qualifications, the Northern Arc highway, forced neighborhood rezonings, funding for the courts, workers' compensation coverage, and of course the flag!
My mother is from Cedartown. She told me that Maddox chased blacks from his restaurant with an ax handle. That seems to be the accepted account.
Even raising an ax handle to other people hardly would seem to qualify as act of love or tolerance, would it?
Walt
Based on what?
Walt
He had a gun too.
Ever see a picture of Heinrich Himmler?
Himmler
Maddox
Hmmmmm........
Walt
You might be interested in the Creative Loafing article that was written awhile ago by Hal Jacobs, here. Be sure to read the rebuttal by Maddox, in which he plainly denies having attacked or hit anybody.
Frankly, if there's a factual dispute between Billy McKinney (yes, THAT Billy McKinney) and Lester Maddox, I'll believe Maddox every time. He is a naive and often misguided (and overly dramatic) man, but he has always been honest.
I should have known better. You're a hater, Walt, and an irrational one. Your momma may be from Cedartown, but you're a long way away down a road I don't particularly want to travel.
So long. Have a nice life, preferably somewhere else.
What am I supposed to make of -your- comments?
And you don't think that a desire for segregation doesn't have an element of hatred in it?
No wonder you are calling me names. That's all you have left.
Walt
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