God Save Texas

by Lawrence Wright

  Bush began that morning with 246 electoral votes compared to 259 for Gore. Florida’s 25 electoral votes would decide the issue. Bush was 1,784 votes ahead in the state, out of 5.8 million that had been cast. Rich Oppel, the editor of the Austin American-Statesman, told me he had stopped the presses twice during the night, before finally going with the headline “History on Hold.”

  The night after the election, I was the master of ceremonies at the Texas Book Festival gala, and there was a reception at the Governor’s Mansion. Laura greeted us at the door and seemed relieved to have the opportunity to just chat about our children. Condoleezza Rice, the future national security adviser and secretary of state, was there, and I took the opportunity to ask if she thought the election stalemate posed a security problem. “Not at this point,” she said. “Right now, I think most other countries are just looking at us with amusement.” Dick Cheney, who was then still scouting potential vice presidents (other than himself), sat alone in an anteroom, gripping a drink and looking bewildered. Rick Perry, the recently elected lieutenant governor, stood in the foyer, obviously wondering which new office he was going to hold.

  The governor finally arrived, agitated and exhausted. He had a bandage on his right temple where a boil had been lanced that afternoon. His nerves were showing, a side of him I had never seen. I asked him if he actually got elected, how he would govern with such a divided mandate. He said he would have to have Democrats in his cabinet (the only one, Norman Mineta, became secretary of transportation). As for the Florida recount then under way, “The sons of bitches are trying to steal the election. If they try it, there are a lot of other states we could contest.” He added: “We could explode the entire electoral process if we wanted to. But we’re not going to let that happen to this country.” As for a possible reconciliation with Gore: “I don’t want to talk to the man. He’s no gentleman. He took back his word. He called me in the middle of the night to concede, then he calls me back ten, twenty minutes later to unconcede.” He stared at the floor, eyes wide in disbelief.

  The next day, I was on a panel at the festival, and afterward, as I was walking out of the capitol to the book-signing tent, I came upon several hundred Gore supporters facing off with an equivalent number of Bush supporters only a few feet away, separated by several dozen state troopers. Both sides were waving signs and shouting slogans. It was very ritualized. “Bush has won, the people have spoken!” one side chanted, and the other responded, “Recount the vote!” There was a kabuki quality to the demonstration, at once theatrical and safe, representing the sharp division of the country but also its democratic restraints. Somehow it made me feel especially patriotic. I remarked to one of the troopers, “Isn’t this great?” He grinned and said, “It’s just wonderful.”

  Gore demanded a recount in precincts where he had done well. An immediate recount of all the ballots cast in the state via voting machines lowered Bush’s lead to 327, with absentee ballots yet to be tabulated and a mass of ballots that were difficult to decipher. For thirty-six days the country was hypnotized by the intense partisan struggle under way in Florida, having to do with “undercounts,” “butterfly” ballots, and “hanging,” “pregnant,” or “dimpled” chads—the bits of paper that hadn’t been cleanly punched out. Nearly 3 percent of Florida voters—174,000 of them—had bungled their vote. At one point, Bush’s lead dropped to 286 votes. Cheney had a heart attack.

  Under the Constitution, the issue had to be resolved before December 12, when the electors would meet, or the election would be thrown into the House of Representatives. On December 11, the U.S. Supreme Court met to hear arguments by both sides, and at 10:00 p.m., in a 5−4 decision, the Court brought the recount to an end. Bush would be the nation’s forty-third president.

  Many Democrats still believe that the Court overturned the will of the people, arguing that Gore won the popular vote nationally, and might have won Florida if the recount he had sought had been allowed to proceed. Later, a consortium of newspapers did recount all the ballots. Paradoxically, under the restrictions that Gore had requested, Bush would have won by an even wider margin, and if the recount had followed the procedure demanded by Bush’s team, Gore would have won. If every vote in Florida had been counted, Gore would have won under some scenarios (all dimpled or hanging chads were accepted) and Bush under others (a vote counted only when cleanly punched, or when the chad was detached on at least two corners). The ambiguity was maddening. We entertained friends from Massachusetts who were horrified that we would even speak to the Bushes after what they had done. “Rather, you should spit on their shoes and say, ‘Sir, how dare you!’ ” the red-faced husband said. I admitted that we actually liked the family. “Surely not the mother!” he cried.

  The mood at the annual Christmas party at the mansion was completely different from that of the party only a month before, during the book festival. I had a chat with Bush, who had met with President Clinton and Vice President Gore earlier that day. He said he had told Clinton that Gore made a mistake by not enlisting the president more in the campaign. “Yeah, we’re still trying to figure Al out,” Clinton said. Bush thought there wasn’t much allegiance or affection between the two men. Clinton, he said, “didn’t seem to mind my being president.” As for his meeting with Gore, he acknowledged it was brief. “Yeah, sixteen minutes,” he said. “What could you say? The man’s not much of a conversationalist.”

  Bush was cheerful and relaxed, bouncing on his toes. A mutual friend of ours, Grant Thomas, who had been at Harvard the same time as Bush, walked in, and the president-elect grabbed him by the back of his neck and cried, “Grant! Can you believe this? I’m the president of the whole fucking United States!”

  SIX

  Turn the Radio On

  One can drive across Texas and be in two different states at the same time: AM Texas and FM Texas. FM Texas is the silky voice of city dwellers in the kingdom of NPR. It is progressive, blue, reasonable, secular, and smug—almost like California. AM Texas speaks to the suburbs and the rural areas—Trumpland. It’s endless bluster and endless ads. Paranoia and piety are the main items on the menu.

  Alex Jones is Texas’s main contribution to this indignant conversation. In addition to his radio program, The Alex Jones Show, he runs an influential website, InfoWars.com, a progenitor of the fake news phenomenon. Rolling Stone called Jones “the most paranoid man in America.” In his hyperbolic imagination, the U.S. government has been behind nearly every disaster imaginable, including 9/11 (“an inside job”), the Oklahoma City bombing (a “false flag” operation), and the Sandy Hook massacre (“a giant hoax”). As for Hillary Clinton (“one of the most powerful criminal kingpins in history”), Jones alleges that she has “personally murdered and chopped up” children.

  I met Jones in 2009, when filmmaker Richard Linklater invited me to a screening of American Prince, a documentary by Tommy Pallotta. Rick has always been drawn to alternative ways of thinking, like an anthropologist studying vision quests among Plains Indians. He cast Jones as a street-corner prophet with a bullhorn in A Scanner Darkly, a rotoscoped realization of Philip K. Dick’s dystopian novel. Jones played a similar role in a previous Linklater film, Waking Life. I had only a dim idea who Jones was at the time. He had grown up in a suburb outside Dallas and moved to Austin. His defining moment was the siege by the U.S. government of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, in 1993. After that, he became an apostle of the extreme libertarian antigovernment movement.

  Rick impishly introduced us, and then stood back with his arms crossed and a delighted expression on his face. Jones has a chunky build and a graveled voice and probing eyes. He knew about my book on al-Qaeda, The Looming Tower, although I didn’t have the impression that he had read it, or anything much on the subject. He ventured the opinion that American forces were sending “assassination squads” into Middle Eastern countries, “to take out the top guys” in al-Qaeda. I responded that a good source of mi
ne, Jamal Khalifa, who was Osama bin Laden’s brother-in-law, had been murdered in Madagascar, I believe by American Special Forces. At that point, I suppose we were in agreement. I found him pleasant and curious—playful, in a way.

  And yet, Jones’s bizarre assertions about 9/11 were already shouldering their way into the popular culture. He claims credit for founding the “9/11 Truth” movement, which in its most robust version goes like this: The U.S. government, in league with Israel, knew that al-Qaeda was going to strike America, but the terrorist group wasn’t capable of pulling off such an ambitious plan by itself. To ensure the success of the attack, American operatives placed high explosives in the towers, which detonated after the planes struck, creating a “controlled bombing” to bring the buildings down. Moreover, the Pentagon wasn’t actually struck by American Airlines Flight 77; it was hit by an American missile. As for the heroic actions of the passengers on the last of the hijacked planes, United Flight 93, who thwarted the attack on the White House, the Truthers assert that the plane was either shot down by a U.S. military jet or secretly landed safely. All this was done to provide an excuse to invade Iraq and steal the oil.

  There is something mesmerizing about Jones’s ability to rant. He reminds me of the televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, whom I once interviewed. Like Swaggart, Jones lives in a world of revelation, convincing himself of the truth of whatever comes out of his mouth. He may also be a “performance artist,” as Jones’s lawyer recently claimed in a custody battle with his former wife, but that suggests he doesn’t really believe what he’s saying—that he’s only talking for effect. Rick later told me that about a week after 9/11, when he and Jones were walking to a screening of Waking Life, Jones admitted that the U.S. government wasn’t actually responsible for 9/11, “but they’re going to use this for all kinds of horrible stuff.” “He was right about that,” Rick observed, “but that kind of insight isn’t easily monetized.”

  Jones claims a long history in Texas, saying that his “great-great-great-great-great-grandfather” was at Gonzales, the site of the famous cannon that inspired the “Come and Take It” flag. Jones made a speech in front of the Alamo in 2013, with the Gonzales flag flying behind him and a semiautomatic weapon slung over his shoulder. According to Jones, the central message his great-great-great-great-great-grandfather wanted to deliver to the Mexican forces was “We’re not turning our guns in and we’re not running and we’re not backing down. If you want ’em, come and take ’em!”

  After the speech, he and the camera crew wandered over to sport with a small counterdemonstration in favor of gun control. There’s a video of an older woman asking Jones to leave. She says that she wasn’t trying to take his guns away from him. “Santa Anna wanted the guns!” Jones says as the woman starts to walk off. But then the woman’s husband, an older, bald man in a sweater vest, steps in front of Jones. “A gun grab is something nobody in this country wants,” he says.

  “Well, sir, all I can say is, you’re really getting in my space,” Jones responds. They are actually standing very close together.

  “Why don’t you back up,” the man says.

  “No, I’m not gonna back up.” Jones moves in closer, chest to chest. “Listen, I don’t want to beat an old guy up, so don’t touch me.”

  “This guy could take you out in a heartbeat, dear,” the wife warns Jones.

  Jones wisely steps back.

  While the husband continues to engage with Jones, his exasperated wife tells him, “Sweetheart, you’re giving them what they want.” There’s obviously something deeper going on between the couple. The husband clings to her wrist, but he can’t tear himself away from Jones.

  “Do you know that assault rifles are only used in two percent of crimes?” Jones asks.

  “I know that an assault rifle was used to murder my daughter in Aurora,” the husband says.

  Jones jumps back. “I didn’t touch your daughter!” he cries.

  Jones had called the 2012 Batman shooting, in which twelve people were killed and seventy injured in a movie theater in the Denver suburb of Aurora, “a false flag, mind-control event.” He contends that the movie itself was “a weaponized, propaganda warfare system” with subliminal messages designed to make people frightened of terrorism, so that “Bloomberg, Chuckie Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and the usual suspects” could push for gun control. Similar Jones rants about mass tragedies being staged by the government have generated death threats for parents of the children murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Another Jones acolyte walked into Comet Ping Pong, a family-oriented pizza parlor in Washington, D.C., in December 2016, and fired a semiautomatic weapon, saying he was there to investigate the claims, made by Jones, that the restaurant was the center of a child pornography ring, led by John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman. Jones eventually apologized for that incident, apparently under legal pressure, but he rarely accepts responsibility for the damage done to the reputations and lives of people he has slandered.

  In the summer of 2015, when the U.S. Army announced its intention to conduct a massive, eight-week training exercise called Jade Helm, ranging across seven states, Jones floated the “news” that the federal government was planning to occupy Texas and impose martial law. Walmarts were being converted into concentration camps. Blue Bell Ice Cream trucks would become mobile morgues. “This is an invasion,” he claimed, “in preparation for the financial collapse and maybe even Obama not leaving office.” Instead of switching stations, Governor Greg Abbott hurriedly called out the Texas State Guard to “monitor” the exercise. (Yes, we have our own state militia, just in case.)

  Jones’s fantasies caught the ear of Donald Trump when he started suggesting that Hillary Clinton belonged in prison. That became a mantra in the Trump presidential campaign, as did Jones’s allegation that President Obama and Hillary Clinton founded ISIS and that she was being kept alive only by drugs. “It is surreal to talk about issues here on air and then word for word hear Trump say it two days later,” Jones marveled. On another occasion he remarked, “We’re like synced—there isn’t any wires in our ears—literally, to each other.” Trump himself told Jones on his show, “Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down. You will be very, very impressed, I hope. And I think we will be speaking a lot.”

  * * *

  THE AM POLITICAL AGENDA completed its takeover of Texas politics in 2014, when Dan Patrick, a drive-time radio talk show host from Houston, was elected lieutenant governor. He had a knack for shameless self-promotion—getting a vasectomy on the air, for instance. My friend Mimi Swartz, a journalist in Houston, wrote in Texas Monthly about being on a panel with Patrick in 2003 to interview candidates to be mayor of Houston. “He could not have been more polite or solicitous,” Mimi wrote of Patrick. “Just as the program started, he turned to me and casually suggested the following: ‘Let me see your questions to make sure we don’t duplicate each other.’ ” He then proceeded to ask all her questions himself—“leaving me to scramble,” Mimi recalled, “dumbfounded, in search of new ones as I simultaneously tried to figure out what kind of person was sitting next to me.”

  Patrick was first elected to the Texas Senate in 2006, running as an outsider. “It was as if Rush Limbaugh were running,” Bill Miller, a prominent lobbyist in Austin, told me. Patrick crushed three well-known candidates in the Republican primary, and won the general election with nearly 70 percent of the vote.

  Talented and relentless, Patrick brought with him the expected AM platform of anti-abortion absolutism and hostility to same-sex marriage and illegal immigration. “When he was first elected, he was treated as a pariah in the Senate,” Miller said. “Everyone thought he was going to be a crazy man.” But he won respect through his service on the education committee, eventually serving as its chairman. “He was recognized for his artfulness,” says Miller. In 2014, Patrick beat the incumbent lieutenant governor, David Dewhurst, in the primary, and t
hen rolled into office atop another Republican tidal wave. Evan Smith, the cofounder of The Texas Tribune, an online journal of state politics, said of Patrick, “He’s the most conservative person ever elected to statewide office in the history of Texas.”

  FM and AM Texas rarely talk to each other, but in September 2015, after the shooting of a police officer in Houston by a former mental patient, Patrick appeared on an NPR station in Austin. Patrick had urged Texans to be always respectful of peace officers and to thoughtfully pick up their tabs when they see them in restaurants. David Brown, the urbane host of Texas Standard, gently pointed out that there had been a substantial backlash online to Patrick’s statement. Videos of police abuse and the shooting of unarmed citizens were generating national concern about police behavior. “Even people who don’t engage in reckless rhetoric have said things like ‘Look, respect has to be earned,’ ” Brown said. “There’s a lot of skepticism out there. How do you convince those people?”

  “You know, your type of interview has to stop,” Patrick abruptly replied. “When I was asked to do an interview on NPR, I asked myself, ‘Do I really want to do this? They’re not in the police officers’ corner.’ And you’ve proven that by your interview.”

  (Patrick declined several opportunities to speak with me.)

  Patrick’s signature accomplishment has been the passage of laws allowing certified license holders to openly carry weapons and also to carry concealed weapons on public college campuses. He told Chuck Todd on Meet the Press that the fear that guns in public places would create undue alarm was “just propaganda by those who either don’t like guns or who are afraid of guns.”

  The lieutenant governor’s statement made me recall an incident on May 11, 2013, when Steve Harrigan and I were in Dallas for a literary event, along with our wives and Steve’s daughter Charlotte. We decided to visit the George W. Bush Library on the campus of Southern Methodist University. It was less than a month after the Boston Marathon bombing and the day before a mass shooting at a Mother’s Day parade in New Orleans. We were lined up with a large crowd in the vast marble atrium, called Freedom Hall, waiting to enter the exhibitions, when someone cried out, “Active shooter!”