There’s a lot to be proud of in the Lone Star State, but as my 101-year-old Texan father will warn you: don’t bring up Ted Cruz or Rick Perry

Texas pride? There's nothing quite like it. Just don't mention politics, ever

My father never forgave St Michael hospital for the defining circumstances of my birth.

He and his family had lived for decades on the Texas side of Texarkana, a town in the north-east corner of the state. My mother and her family, meanwhile, lived on the Arkansas side of town. It seems that the state line, which bisects Texarkana into Texas and Arkansas portions, also ran directly through the hospital, and when my mother was wheeled into the delivery room, she was physically transported into Arkansas. Thus my parents’ first son had Texarkana, Arkansas, forever listed as his place of birth.

And so began my father’s long emotional trauma, until he relented a bit as he turned 100, the year before last. Some injuries do take a while to heal. Texans are like that.

There is a postcard, which I believe is still sold in the also-divided main post office on state line Avenue, depicting an elderly Arkansas farmer and his mule standing side by side with the white demarcation of the state line running directly on the pavement between them. The caption on the postcard reads: “Man in Arkansas with his ass in Texas.”

Like I said, Texans are like that.

Jim Gabour’s father: a real Texan. Photograph: Jim Gabour

Especially their politicians – even the supposedly sane ones.

Dwight Eisenhower was the first with national governmental power, but he was transported quickly after birth to the more rational climes of midwestern Kansas, where he seemingly developed the very un-Texas rationale of thinking before getting into fights. This served him well as commander-in-chief of the army.

But the next cowboy up was a doozie. The single lasting image I can remember of Lyndon Baines Johnson, who was a vastly successful and thoughtful leader of this country until he took on the Vietnam war, was a black and white news photo.

In the internationally distributed picture, the president is holding up his shirt so reporters and photographers can get a look at the stitches that remained after his abdominal surgery. The sight was not pleasant on front pages, especially coming in tandem with so many gruesome images arriving daily in newspapers from south-east Asia.

Lyndon Johnson shows gall bladder surgery scar. Photograph: Public domain

This was the same rational LBJ who fought for Americans’ civil rights, who boosted public broadcasting into prominence, who brought Medicare and Medicaid to life, who worked tirelessly for the environment (his wife Lady Bird at one point all but eradicated roadside billboards in Texas) and furthered education for all.

This was a man who conducted a decidedly personal war on poverty. All these accomplishments were eventually brought to a public perception of irrelevance, in large part because of his bigger-than-life “Texas” approach to his presidency and its relation to how he envisioned larger government.

We have since had a string of further presidential involvements from the state.



George H W Bush’s name now adorns the former Intercontinental airport in Houston, and a life-size bronze statue of the man stands just to the rear of the security gate at the airport’s main entrance. The statue, amusingly entitled Winds of Change, depicts the elder Bush with his jacket over his shoulder and his bronze tie flying back in the wind.

Then there was the true Texas cowboy, George W Bush. Failed as a soldier, failed as an oilman, failed as a professional sports executive, failed as a governor, and most spectacularly failed as the tongue-tied and logic-challenged leader of the free world, his legacy lives on appropriately in his and his vice-president’s contradictory memoirs.

These quotes are not included in those two scholarly tomes:

‘See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.’ — George W Bush, Greece, New York, 24 May 2005 ‘I think it was in the Rose Garden where I issued this brilliant statement: If I had a magic wand – but the president doesn’t have a magic wand. You just can’t say, ‘low gas.’ — George W Bush, Washington DC, 15 July 2008 ‘I’ll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office.’ — George W Bush, Washington, DC, 12 May 2008

And so on, and so on.

George W Bush left office with an approval rating of 22%.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest George W Bush dons a cowboy hat as he speaks at the annual meeting of the cattle industry in 2002. Photograph: Win McNamee/Reuters

Then the Texan who considered himself next in line declared for the presidency: former Texas governor Rick Perry. After all, he was once George W Bush’s lieutenant governor, so he too should have a shot at the Oval Office. Perry even tried to distance himself from his unpopular former mentor, especially when newspapers like the Washington Post started to ask: Is Rick Perry too George W Bush-y?

His own personal gaffes at the podium have amplified the comparison. The BBC News Magazine tried to guess what was happening in Perry’s head as his brain “froze”. The Late Show with David Letterman featured Perry in full spin mode with Perry himself doing a self-mocking segment on Top 10 Rick Perry Excuses.

Still, over the last year he considered coming back into the fray for 2016. But then up walked Ted Cruz, and Perry bailed. Yet another Texan coveting a Pennsylvania Avenue mailing address.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest US senator Ted Cruz. Photograph: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images

He wants to show he will have a legacy as a politician. In trying to filibuster Obama’s healthcare law, Cruz filled his speech with wisdom:

“I’ll talk until I can’t stand any more. Don’t worry, I have government-run health insurance. I’ll be fine.” [Comparing Obamacare to the Nazis]: “Look, we saw in Britain, Neville Chamberlain, who told the British people, ‘Accept the Nazis. Yes, they’ll dominate the continent of Europe but that’s not our problem. Let’s appease them. Why? Because it can’t be done. We can’t possibly stand against them.’” “Twenty years from now if there is some obscure trivial pursuit question, I am confident I will be the answer.”

Yes, Cruz can on occasion talk, and as a front-page New York Times story recently explored, he can indeed do so in full sentences. He was a college debater on a high enough level that he and his partner contended for both the national and international title. They failed to win on both occasions. A precedent many non-Texans hope will be mirrored by his presidential campaign.

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Meanwhile, now that George W Bush has moved back to his ranch in the Lone Star State, my father has stopped kidding me about my Arkansas birth certificate.

In his book of world inequities, it is finally OK that I came into the world there. But he still has to face the fact that he himself was born in Texas, in 1913.

In 2015, with him 101 years old and still concerned about politics, having spent over 60 of those years in Louisiana, and with teetotallers like Ted Cruz dominating the airwaves, Dad won’t even discuss the state of his birth.

Before she passed, my Arkansas-born mother, who was an editor, had chided my father repeatedly that at least her state had Bill Clinton as its White House representative. She admired the impeached politician. “We need to bring back that handsome adulterer,” she said on more than one occasion. “At least we knew what he stood for.”

Looking at politics here in Louisiana, on the other hand, it seems voters will stand for anything. I carry no blame. I was not born here, you see.