Good morning,

No matter how tempting, a self-governing people must not let political interactions become personal. After all, we have a Republic to save.

Here is today’s Texas Minute.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

Friday, December 18, 2020
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• At 11 a.m. today I’ll be on live with Brandon Waltens on The Headline – the last episode of 2020! We’re going to preview the Senate District 30 runoff election taking place tomorrow. We’d like for you to join us in the conversation to discuss what stories were most important in 2020, and what you’re looking forward to in 2021.
   
• Can’t participate in real time? The show will be available in the archive as soon as we end the live broadcast.

• At a press conference yesterday hailing the arrival of coronavirus vaccines, Gov. Greg Abbott said economic shutdowns would never again be imposed on Texans – even as numerous areas of the state remain closed down. Brandon Waltens was at the press conference and has the details.
   
• “It’s time to put behind us shutdowns. No more shutdowns. We need to focus on opening up businesses,” said Abbott outside a UPS facility in Austin. Yet earlier this month the governor issued an executive order reducing most businesses’ capacity from 75 percent to 50 percent within a North Texas region that contains over a quarter of the state’s population.
   
• The governor stressed that use of the coronavirus vaccine will be voluntary. 
      
• “We always want to make clear that vaccines are transformational, but there are some people who do not want them. And so, vaccines in the state of Texas are voluntary, never required.” – Gov. Greg Abbott

• As he was leaving the press conference, Gov. Abbott answered a question from Texas Scorecard about the status of the Texas Capitol.
   
• “I do think the Capitol should be reopened, and the Capitol will be reopened,” Abbott said, though he would not elaborate on the timing or other details.

• Speaking of which... the grassroots juggernaut known as the True Texas Project has weighed in on the subject of the Capitol being closed to the public. Earlier this week, the organization’s board of directors unanimously endorsed a resolution calling for the Texas Capitol to be opened without mandates or restrictions.
      
• “Keeping the Capitol closed to the public or imposing unreasonable restrictions on entrance to the building would be a gross violation of the Texas Constitution, and a denial of Texans’ most basic right to participate in the governance of the State.” – Fran Rhodes, president of True Texas Project

• If you haven’t yet had a chance, let us know – in one word – how you would describe 2020!

• Please join me in a wishing a very happy birthday to my friend, mentor, and fellow Scorecard board member, Tim Dunn!

Friday Reflection

Politicians like to make politics personal, because inflamed indignation allows them to skirt past serious questions about their representative performance. As citizens, it is up to us to keep it professional.

Let me state that again. Politicians, despite their protests, like for politics to be intensely personal. 

It’s why their campaign materials lead with an emphasis on their spouses and offspring, rather than the tasks they will accomplish. They call it “introducing themselves,” but it’s really all about personalizing their political brand. 

It’s why at Christmas they all send “holiday” cards featuring the incumbent’s family professionally poised on a perfectly manicured lawn, without a mention of what they specifically accomplished on your agenda this year. 

Baubles, trinkets, and calendars – sent as mass-produced gifts – are designed to draw us in as “friends” who “get something” from a perceived “relationship.” 

And so every policy question is turned into a referendum on their family, every representational critique is a slight against their loved ones. Any criticism of their record gets defensively re-framed as a personal attack, an insult, or a slur.

It’s easy to get sucked in. It’s easy, and wrong, to respond in kind. 

More often, though, we err in the other direction. We allow politicians to personalize politics in a way that ensures we give them a pass.

We don’t want to believe someone whose kids played soccer in the same league as ours could possibly be doing a bad job. We’ll give a pass to the politician who attended our college, or whose cousin grew up near our hometown.

In the 1790s, congressional districts had a population of 30,000. Today that number is approximately 710,000. Members of the Texas House have approximately 170,000 constituents.

Suffice it to say, even our “closest” representatives are not the bosom buddy of every constituent as their correspondence and posture might indicate. 

We shouldn’t act like it, either.

We need to step back, for the sake of our Republic. We must dial down the emotion in our reckoning of political actors’ official actions. Citizens must approach government professionally, even if the politicians do not. We need to stop personalizing our relationship with the elected officials whose names appear on our ballot – even if we actually do know them personally. 

And we must never take personally their unwillingness – or inability – to deliver on our expectations.

Politicians are more correctly viewed as our servants, the hired help. While as individuals they are absolutely owed common courtesy and the basic dignity of humanity... they are not owed our blind fealty or slavish deference. They are hired to do a job; do it right, or go do something else.

All that should matter to us is whether they have done the job to our satisfaction, and leave it at that. 

A normal person doesn’t assail the character of a waitress who neglects to fill our water glasses, but we might stop going to that restaurant. In the real world, a reasonable person doesn’t feel the need to question the moral integrity of an employee who is simply not up to the requirements of the job. The employee is either terminated or reassigned; it’s not personal.

In the same way, when the politicians fail, we should point it out – then find a replacement. It’s not personal; we must simply demand results.

Politics doesn’t have to be personal. It’s up to us, as citizens, to lead the way.