ustxtxb_obs_1979_08_24_50_00003-00000_000.pdf

as prologue “Salute! for advising Nixon to raise the prices consumers pay for milk so Nixon could get all the money possible from the milk producers for politics. . . . “Salute! for switching to the Republican Party after his treachery to the Democrats made it clear they would never nominate him for President.” But you get the idea. So this edition of the Observer is John Connally’s, and nearly Dugger’s perusal of the positions Connally has taken on na tional issues in the 1970s, the period of time in which he served all of it is not original. The exception, written for this issue, is in the cabinet of a Republican president and later became a Observer had to say about Connally in the ’60s when he was a Texas governor and an establishment Democrat. Two full-length articles are reprinted nearly intact. One, from October 1968, is a retrospective view of the Connally years. Dugger spent a couple of hours with the outgoing governor talking over the preceding six years; the summing-up reappears here, beginning on page 6. The other is a report, from May 1964, on Connally’s service as executor of the estate of the fabulously wealthy oilman, Sid Richardson. This subjectin particular, Connally’s compensation for said service and the way it was paid out over the years he was governoris one on which he is still dissembling. It begins on page 9, and it’s the one the senators were asking about in 1971. Then, starting on page 12, is a chronological string of shorter excerpts, from the first race for governor in 1962 through the end of the years in the statehouse. It consists largely of commentary on his campaigns, political positions, performance civil rights, the war on poverty, labor, farmworkers’ rights, and so forth. Finally, on pages 28 and 29, you’ll find a personal look at the doings of inauguration week in Austin, January 1963. Throughout, the date of the Observer issue from which the article or excerpt is taken can be found in boldface type at the top of the piece. We’ve corrected a few typographical errors and we’ve done a little copyediting to make the stylistic habits of several different editors consistentthings like capitalization and abbreviations. Other than that, these pieces are word-forword from the ’60s. We have not gone into the events of Connally’s public life in the ’70s because they are better knownthey got plenty of attention from the national press when they happened and they’re being rehashed now as his presidential candidacy proceeds. Besides, we ran out of space. What to make of it all? I have no profundities to put forth. John Connally’s record is that of a political opportunist, neither a conservative nor a liberal in the generally understood meanings of those terms, and neither, for that matter, a real Democrat nor a real Republican. The New Republic last year described his political philosophy as “corporate socialism,” and that seems as fair a label as I’ve heard. Anyhow, he now claims to be some sort of Republican. In the ’60s when he was governor of Texas, he was a Democrat loudly devoted to the preservation of a one-party state. He’s changed his tune since then, but then changing his tune a lot is one of the consistent things about him. Don’t take my word for it. Read on. L.R. Tad Hershom THE TEXAS OBSERVER 3