It's Lit Y'all | "Mississippi Politics: The Struggle for Power" by Jere Nash & Andy Taggart

We were just talking about our politics more influenced by personality than they used to be or not so much anymore. And Andy was just sharing that he thinks that personality is kind of the major driving force in today's politics as evidenced by the allegiance to Donald Trump, who you don't know from one day to the next, which way he's going to go. As you said, I'm very critical issues. And so, Jerry, is this where we all are both a gunnery? I think Andy is correct that it's sort of personality driven, but it's driven within the confines of the Republican party. There's no crossover or bleed outside of the party. And so in that sense, I will continue to contend that party is the driving force. I just think in today's world, your partisan affiliation sort of flag of a better term, Andy Tiger, Trump's at all. That's very clever, Jerry. What we don't have except in very limited examples, and they all seem to find themselves losing primaries or retiring in despair, is people of significant influence who are willing to say my party has lost its mind. And from time to time, that needs to be said. It just does. Somebody in both parties on a pretty regular basis needs to stand up and say, are you all completely crazy? We are not doing this. And there's just none of that today. This is an MPB Think Radio Podcast. Want to know what's going on in your neck of the woods and learn the history and the people behind the events that you love across the state? Get to know the real Mississippi. Check out MPB Think Radio's next stop Mississippi Podcast on all platforms or on the MPB public media app. Welcome to its lit y'all on MPB Think Radio. I'm your host Ellen Daniels and in with me, today I have the great honor of having Andy Taggart and Jerry Nash in talking with their new edition of Mississippi politics. The struggle for power in 1976 to 2026. Now, guys, this is not Shell's first round doing this with this book. So y'all've had, is this the third edition? It is the third edition. Jerry came to see me in 2003 with what in retrospect was a brilliant idea. At the time, he made the first pitch to me. I told him to get out of my office and he wouldn't leave. We've been at it for close to 25 years. So were y'all friends before the first edition? That's a good question. There's a very, very long story that I will spare you in your listeners about Nash and Taggart getting together. But I think people would want to hear that, Jerry. I want to hear your version. Exactly. You tell your version, Jerry, and then Andy, you tell yours. As you know, I managed Ray Mavis' campaign for governor in 1987, served as his chief of staff for a couple of years and then went to manage the 1991 re-election campaign. Andy had gotten fired up by the campaign of Kirk Fortice in 1991 and had joined Kirk's campaign very early. And participated, I don't think you were paid. No, only at a volunteer. Participated in a volunteer capacity and Fortice's campaign. And then Fortice chose Andy to be his chief of staff. So. So y'all are each other's counterparts kind of? Or to put it a little more crestly, we met through a hostile takeover. And so Andy occupied the same office at the capital that I occupied. I lasted two and a half years and I think you lasted four years. Not quite four. Not quite four. But in any event, Andy was not on my good friend's list. We didn't share Christmas cards for a while then. And then a mutual friend who had been warning to get us together, I'm going to use the word trick me to coming to his office. And there in the adjoining room was staggered, waiting to sit down and visit with me. And which we did. And we ended up having a couple of lunches. And then we actually did a couple of projects together. He was with Butler Snow at the time. And we did some research in writing projects together. So by, I guess, late fall or early winter of 2003, we do each other fairly well. I think it's fair to say so that when I realized that writing a book of political history, Mississippi needed to be done with both the Democrat and the Republican to have credibility. Andy was sort of the first choice. Yeah. I mean, it's such a unique thing that you know, y'all've done together. And so the first edition came out, you know, almost 20 years ago. And I have to tell y'all that that was kind of the book was out. Maybe it was the second edition that had come out during my tenure at Lemuria. And I have sold more copies of that book than I can even begin to count. And it just, you know, it stayed on like, you know, in the nonfiction area on like the kind of display shelf, which just stacks of them for forever. And now we're back to that yet again with this third edition. So have y'all looked back at like the first or second edition after all these years? And have y'all discovered anything that y'all would maybe change or at least understood differently than the first one around? Well, it's a great question. For our second edition, we did not make any effort to do a substantive rewrite of the first edition. We simply added the information and chapters that we thought appropriate from the time that the first edition left off until the publication of the second. But for our third edition, though, for the last year, not only have Jerry and I been working on the new chapters to bring us current to through about 2024, but we made substantive rewrites to a significant amount of the volume in what would have been the first and second editions. To some extent, we clarified or tightened factual observations, but we didn't really find many factual errors. But we thought that there were more effective ways of conveying what we had originally written. And obviously, we know a lot more now than we knew then. And it allowed us to put some additional flesh on the bones of some things that we just didn't fully understand at the time. And following up on that, given all of what Andy just described in looking back over the first and second edition, we totally rewrote the introduction in the conclusion. In addition to adding three new chapters, substantially rewriting a couple of chapters in completely overhauled the bibliography. There are really two big dangers Ellen and our minds about writing contemporary history. One is the very narrow line, the very thin line between reportage and history so that we had to be careful that we weren't just trying to report news that we really were trying to record history. But the other is, history is happening every day. Right. And so at some point, we had to cut off and our cutoff came almost exactly at the time, the US Supreme Court handed down Louisiana versus Cal A. Yeah. You know, the real earth moving opinion on the Voting Rights Act earlier this year. And so we really couldn't treat it in the substantive context of the book. And we wrote an epilogue, devoted exclusively to that development. Yeah. So you'll both come from opposite sides of the political aisle, which is just, I think, such a unique thing about this partnership. I mean, and as you said, and do you go from, you know, meeting in a hostile takeover to now that you'll have, you know, you'll have been partners in something since 2003. Let that be a lesson to everyone who's listening. You know, both of you have differing opinions on some pretty key things. Have either of you convinced the other of seeing something maybe differently? It's interesting. You say that because often when we have the privilege of standing behind a microphone and I get to introduce Jerry, I say something like he's literally one of the smartest people I know. And by the way, I'm not just saying that lightly, it's true. Yeah. And the reason that I've been determined to stay partners with him all this time is that I just think over time, sooner or later, he'll get something right. You know, that a guy that's smart, the law of averages will have to catch up with. But in good conscience, well, Jerry and I agree on almost no substantive elements of public policy. We agree on the political consequences and the political likelihoods of what we view as objective facts. And that's what's made I think it possible for us to be partners for such a long time. Yeah. And there are two pieces of what Andy said that we acknowledge in the book. In the first edition, we acknowledge in describing the political consequences of tort reform, we approach that issue from different perspectives on a public policy basis. But from a political implication basis, we agree on that in as latest We devoted it an entire chapter to abortion and the political consequences of that issue and again felt the need to inform the readers that we hold greatly opposing sides on that public policy issue, but once again agree on the ramifications of the way it's been treated in the Mississippi and across the nation. Yeah, if I may, I don't want to hide back to a little parenthetical that you offered a few moments ago about the duration of our partnership, notwithstanding how it started. We don't hold ourselves out as role models. When you get to be our age, you know what your character flaws are and where your clay feet manifest themselves. But we're both fathers of sons and we do think it's really important to try to model the premise that people can disagree on really important issues and even disagree quite strongly on really important issues. And still be friends and respect one another. And both of us feel that the body politic is really unhealthy on that point. And I am going to wholeheartedly agree with you on that Andy. I'm your host Ellen, and I am still here with two Mississippi boys, Jerry Nash and Andy Tagger. And we are discussing the third edition of their book, Mississippi Politics, The Struggle for Power, in 1976 through 2026. And so Andy, when we got off, you were talking about how you don't view you and Jerry as role models as y'all coming from different sides of the political aisle and how people can still disagree on really key points, but still get along and have a friendship. And so I just want to give a little personal take on that when I was y'all were just at the book festival on September 26th. And Henry Barber and Dr. Ori were the moderators for this session that happened in the Capitol with y'all about your book. And when I was talking to Henry Barber on the phone about doing this session, you know, he really was really keyed up about doing this session because he was like this. They are just kind of the perfect example in this state of two people who believe have very different political beliefs, but can come together and be friends and work on something and respect one another despite the differing opinion. And so while you say that y'all are not role models, I'm going to have to politely disagree in this, you know, in the time that we are in, because as you both know quite well, it is very, very vicious and hostile. We as a society about differing political opinions. And I just think that everybody could take a note from y'all's book, a deeply respect y'all's friendship. That's kind of you to say. All right, the book. I will offer one other observation about one of the many reasons why we've been able to maintain this friendship. We're always introduced as anti-taggot as a conservative Republican and Jerry Nash as a liberal Democrat. The reason it's easy to be friends with Andy is that he's a conservative before he's a Republican. Yeah. And I like to think that I'm a liberal before I'm a Democrat, so there are core values at play. And one can be friends with someone who has core values that don't change depending on whatever the political wins are. You can respect someone's core values, recognize them as core values that are deeply held because that person has organized moral framework, and you can respect that. And find ways to work together on issues that you can agree on because it's not a political view that Andy holds. It's a deeply moral view. So thank you for saying that, Jerry, because I was just, as you were talking, I was, you know, in the before times, you know, over, you know, before like the last probably like 15 years. You know, we were all people first, and now it's kind of like it's your political party, which is put first. I mean, do you get what I'm saying? Like completely. Yeah, that's kind of like the identifying characteristic for people in a lot of ways now. And, you know, I have so many people, you know, mentioned me like, you know, I know several couples, you know, like one of them's a Democrat, one of them's a Republican. And, you know, somebody would be like, oh my gosh, you know, how can they be married to somebody that, you know, has a different, you know, belongs to a different political party. And I was like, because when they got married, that wasn't the only thing that people talked about. It wasn't the sole source of their sense of identity. Exactly. And I think that that is something that we have really fallen into over the past decade plus is, you know, this need to like group people into like factions. Or whatever, you know, just, and I don't think it really serves us as, you know, as a society and as human. So, but that's a, that's a much longer conversation. There's a great story that I can't remember how we, how we uncovered this story. It may have been Karen who told me Karen Taggart and his wife who told me this story. But on election night, generally election night, 1995, Taggart is, has left the governor's office as Kurt Fordis is chief of staff, but you're his campaign manager. It, it, it, essentially, for the re-election campaign. So, at some point, I learned this story about Andy and Karen and Kurt Fordis and others are either at the hotel or at the campaign office. And also on the ballot that year was the lieutenant governor, Eddie Briggs, who's a Republican. And his generally election opponent was Ronnie Musgrove, a Democrat. Musgrove been in the Senate for eight or 12 years and decided to run against Briggs who had served four years. Briggs had defeated Brad Dodd back in '91 when Fordis had defeated Ray Mapus for governor. Briggs had defeated Brad Dodd for lieutenant governor. But for whatever reason, and Andy can certainly spend the rest of the program talking about it, Fordis and Briggs did not get along at all. During the course of the returns as they were coming in on election night, Fordis was winning his re-election campaign against Dick Mopus. Musgrove was defeating Eddie Briggs. In many of the same counties, in many of the same precincts, and Andy just sort of looks at Kurt Fordis and his wife, Karen, sort of a raid there on the couch. And said, how could this be happening? Why would Republicans vote for Kurt Fordis and Ronnie Musgrove and Kurt Fordis sort of sheeplessly raises his hand, saying, signifying, well, I'm one of them. And Karen raises her hand in my own wife. Confessed. Look, I always knew I could not really control Kurt Fordis, but I thought I had at least some influence with my wife, apparently not. I like that. I like Karen. I don't think I've met her, but I like her. She definitely cuts her own course. I bet she does. So the book begins in 1976, and it carries a story all the way to 2026, and the last edition was to 2008. You know, you think about 50 years. It's not. I mean, it's a long time, but not a terribly long time, but a lot can happen in that time in politics. If you had to identify the single biggest transformation in Mississippi politics during those 50 years, what would you all say it is? Well, that's really almost an unfair question because there are some really big ones. But if you make me say one, it certainly is the role of African American recipients as full participants in the political process, not just at the ballot box, but in the public policymaking arena. Yeah, Jerry. Well, we open the introduction by saying that this book is an exploration of political power. And in 1976, at the beginning of 1976, white Democrats had all of the political power in Mississippi, and two groups wanted to participate in the political process in Mississippi Republicans and African Americans. And so the 50 years that we explore in addition to a lot of other issues that we cover is how did Republicans and African Americans gain power? And did they do it at the expense of white Democrats? And what do you all think about that? Well, yes. In fact, my second one would have been the shift in power from Democrats to Republicans in Mississippi. In 1976, eight out of eight statewide elected officials were Democrat today, eight out of eight are Republican. In 1976, Mississippi gave its electoral votes to Jimmy Carter, the Democrat nominee for president. And that was the last time. And no presidential candidate since has taken no Democratic candidate since, has taken Mississippi's electoral votes. Yes, there's been a complete sea change in political power from a partisan party. perspective, we went from a one-party state. Effectively, there was only one party even while Republicans were growing as a party. At the beginning of the survey that we conducted and at the end of the survey, there's a legitimate two-party system in Mississippi. Now, some might be cynical enough to say, well, they're really only just a new one-party system because Republicans have a majority. Well, yes and no, there are plenty of counties where Republicans don't have a majority. There are plenty of municipalities where Republicans don't have a majority. But 50 years ago, there was no place at any level in government where Democrats did not have a majority. Why Democrats? Well said. I will add that what we try to explain throughout the book, but certainly in the conclusion is that what Andy just said about the switch from Democratic office holders to Republican office holders, what switch was the label that candidates and office holders put after their name, either a D or an R. What did not switch was the political character of the electorate, which was always conservative on issues that are used to make that distinction. It's just that for a whole variety of reasons, conservatives in Mississippi decided they no longer wanted to be called a Democrat. They were going to be called a Republican. The only respect in which I disagree with Jerry on that point is this. 50 years ago, conservative largely segregationist or post-segregation is since segregation was no longer legal for six years in 1976. Today, I don't think that would be a fair characterization. I believe that conservatives today by and large are conservatives based on a whole host of policy issues and not on race. Certainly. We make that point in the conclusion. In this edition, the Cochran McDaniel Senate race gets substantial attention. Looking back on that more than a decade later, I remember that happening in going through that. I didn't specifically go through it, but I just remember watching everything. What did that race reveal about where the Republican Party was headed both in Mississippi and nationally? It's a great question. Sometime before that, maybe five years before that, Jerry and I were still on WLBT on Sunday nights doing red blue review, a short digest of the politics of the week before. I had just gotten there to tape that week's episode after coming from a tea party rally at the state capital. When the tea party was kind of a new thing. I told Jerry, "This is quite a phenomenon." He said, "Oh, it's just the same old same old. It's just your crowd." I said, "No, no, no. This is really a different thing. We're either going to have to figure out how to assimilate these folks, we meaning Republicans, or we're going to find ourselves facing them and having to defeat them in primaries going forward." Well, in terms that I was right, except I didn't listen to myself. In 2014 was the manifestation of the point that I was making. If that Jerry even reminded me, "Hey, you told me that this was going to happen." What was so helpful to go back, because 2014 was 12 years ago. More than a decade ago. And doing the research to write that chapter, force us to go back and recreate those times from Barack Obama getting elected in '08, beginning to push healthcare reform in '09 and in 2010, the fall out from not only the Obama budget decisions, but also his pushing of the healthcare, which led to the growth of the tea party and how the tea party morphed into a variety of other organized activities in Mississippi. And as Chris McDaniel said when I drove down the Laurel to interview him, he said, "You know, I'm not all that smart of guy. I just saw the wave. I was really the first guy to get on the wave and ride it. I agreed with it, and I agreed with what the sentiments were. But all I had to do was ride this wave that was flowing through the Republican party, and Chris may have been one of the first guys to notice it." Jerry quotes a historian in our book for the premise that there are these waves of time, waves of action, and the politicians who try to go against the waves typically are unsuccessful, and those that can figure out the wave and ride with it typically are successful, and Chris McDaniel came within an eyelash of proving that premise. Yeah, for sure. So you conducted more than 150 interviews for this edition. Who surprised you the most or caused you to rethink an event that you thought that you already understood? Well, Ben. I got to give Jerry a real compliment here. He did the literal footwork. I mean, it almost was reportage. Real-time interviews and collection of recollections of those who were directly involved in the changing of the state flag in the summer of 2020. Then he wrote this extraordinary, very long article for the Journal of Mississippi History, which we then used as the platform for the portion of our chapter, the deals with the changing of the state flag. So I think I would answer your question by saying, "I wasn't shocked to learn what we learned, but I learned so much that I didn't understand about the process of how the legislature finally reached the point of getting enough votes to have two-thirds in both chambers in favor of changing the state flag." Yeah. You're listening to It's Lichol on MPB Think Radio. I'm your host, Ellen Daniels, and I'm still here with Jerry Nash and Andy Taggart, and we are still talking about Mississippi politics, the struggle for power in 1976 to 2026. And so when we left off, Andy was talking about the change of the flag in Mississippi. And that was, of course, one of the questions that I have, but Jerry, you were about to speak on that because you wrote the article for the Mississippi Historical Society about the changing of the flag. How many interviews did you do for that? That's 75. Wow. I wanted to go back to your question about did anyone surprise us when we were doing these interviews? And I wanted to agree with what Andy said. I don't know that I was surprised at learning something that I thought I knew it differently. But the amount of information I gained by doing the interviews was overwhelmingly new and fresh. That I wasn't surprised by all of that new and fresh information, but just sort of absorbed it in because you sit down and you talk with someone for an hour and a half and they opened up and they describe why they did what they did. And I just got the tape recorder running and you just learned so much. Yeah. Again, it wasn't that I learned something that I thought differently. I just, I was a blind canvas just learning. Well, and I want you to expand on that, Jerry, because you know those details better than I, but one thing, Ellen, that struck us so powerfully is that typically when you do an analysis of something, an election, a legislative battle, some, a referendum, some big thing, you can trace the people's actions back to their politics, you know, that my political well-being drove me ultimately to this conclusion. The great and refreshing thing about the new flag vote was plenty of people were voting against their politics. Exactly. That if they were going to take a posture that would be in their best political interest, it would not have been to cast a vote for the new flag. Right. It's very refreshing for us. But it, it's almost just like something magical happened with that effort because people were voting in the best interest of the state in my, I mean, don't you? And, and to put even more personal flavor on it because their families were urging them to do so. Yeah. I mean, Jerry related these conversations to me almost in real time. And again, we were very moved by the fact that members were saying, my wife, my children, my grandchildren were urging me to do this. Well, and then, you know, to, to make it less in a minute, I mean, it was, it was the right choice economically for the state because there were many roadblocks which the state was coming up against because, you know, like these movie studios from Hollywood wouldn't come here because of the flag and things like that. I mean, like as their, oh gosh, with this game that was in, what, you know, I'm not a football follower. But in the, oh, I'll miss the, you know, the game that happened there last year in the economic impact in the state because that game was a loud, college playoffs was allowed to happen there. I mean, you know, let's, you know, bring it down to the bottom line of the budget sheet. I mean, it just, it's. - But I wanna just offer this observation. The economic considerations had been out there for a long, long time. - Long time, and I didn't move the needle. - And I'd never move the needle, ever. So many things came together at the same time in June of 2020, that had never materialized since. It sort of is a demonstration that Andy and I say all the time that if you're into political reform in Mississippi you have to be in for the long haul. It's not for the faint of heart. - Yeah. - And there had been a huge amount of leg work done on behalf of changing the flag for 20 years leading up to June of 2020. And so a number of people had been involved and a number of causes and it sort of, quote, laid a foundation that was then able to sort of be used in that special session. And so it just happened as you say in a magical way and in a magical time that Andy Taggart, I don't think would ever be replicated. If they had not had changed the flag in June of 2020, we'd still have the old flag right now. - I think you're right. - I do think that is right. But I also think that it was one of the highest water marks of our state's political history for all the reasons we've just discussed that people made a judgment based on what they believe was the right thing to do even in the face of their individual politics. - Yeah. - And the other issue that we cover in the book, the last chapter of the book, Mississippi tries to change its image. We cover not only the adoption of a new state flag, but also the building of a civil rights museum, Mississippi put close to $100 million of public money into a world class museum. Museum of Mississippi history and Mississippi Civil Rights Museum. And that was done in 2011. 2011 was an election year. It was done in a single bill dedicated to building a civil rights museum. It was not hidden in any other kind of omnibus bill. So legislators were taking an upper down vote. It was a revenue bill, which meant it required three fifths, not a simple majority to pass. Hayley Barber was governor. Phil Brown was Lieutenant Governor, Phil Gunn was speaker. And in sort of the same way, leaders at the legislature decided that now's the time to do this. And people, again, it could have been, it was an election year, it could have been the same kind of tough vote for someone taking an upper down vote, building a civil rights museum, and people did it. - And the details of that needed to be recorded, whether we did it or somebody else, what I always say by the way, Ellen, is I encourage people to buy our books, not for self aggrandizing reasons, because the money's not making its way to Jerry and me. We just think it's important. And we certainly think it's important that the details of how the civil rights museum even came to be properly chronicles. And so I'm really proud of Jerry's work in that respect. And I'll tell you, from a purely political perspective, I didn't think it could happen. And it had nothing to do with whether we would, people wanted a civil rights museum or race issues. It had to do with, in those days, the state had no money. And so they answered everybody was no. And Haley Barber, who was among the most fiscally conservative governors of the last 50 years, led the charge to do it. - Yeah. - And so the changing of the state flag and the creation of the two Mississippi museums, I mean, those aren't simply election stories. And so, can you talk a little bit about why y'all believe those stories are essential to understanding Mississippi politics? - That's a very fair question. And Jerry and I had had to work really hard to maintain our discipline about what the scope of our work was. - Yeah. - It is not accidental that the title is the struggle for power. Because if we tried to chronicle 50 years of Mississippi politics, we'd need 100 books to do that. There's just no way to write about political history spread large in any kind of meaningful way. So we very much focused on what we believe to be the big ticket items that reflected shifts in power politically. And in the process of doing that, have reached the conclusion that many examples, such as the changing of the state flags, such as the building of the Civil Rights Museum, are symptomatic of these power shifts that we've been talking about. - Yeah. - And again, we started out in December of 2003 thinking that we were just gonna focus on why Jimmy Carter was the last democratic nominee for president to gain Mississippi's electoral votes. And the more we got into the book, the more interviews we did, the more we talked to people, the more we realized that we needed to describe something broader in what was happening in Mississippi was not just this transformation from Democrats to Republicans, the enfranchisement of African Americans, but struggles for power within the legislature, struggles for power between the legislature and the governor's office. And so we used something like the adoption of the Education Reform Act of 1982, the adoption of the Four Lane Highway Program in 1987, Torah Form, it's public policy issues that confronted these power equations and how those issues changed the power equations, both among the electorate inside the Capitol building. - Yeah. - To the point, when we were in the weeds of writing our third edition. So let's say this is six months ago. When I was fact checking an item, I came across an old microfiche newspaper article about the richdened salt dome controversy when there was a big fight about whether nuclear waste would be stored in Mississippi's salt domes down in South Mississippi. And I said, "Nas, we gotta record this." I mean, this was such a cool part of our political history and he said, "Well, yeah, I really was, but it has nothing to do with the struggle for power." That was a pure NIMBY fight, not in my backyard, but really nothing about the shift of political power or political culture in the state of Mississippi. And of course, he was right. And there are many, many other such examples where we have been confronted with friends of ours to say, "Oh, why didn't you include the fill in the blank?" And we've had to say, it just, it didn't fit. It wasn't the right thing. - Yeah, so I want to get to some kind of, kind of some of the eccentricities of politicians. So historically, we've had some pretty big personalities in Mississippi politics and Mississippi. I actually called Jerry one night watching a documentary, it's called The Kings of Tupelo and it was a legislator. I can't remember his name and I just said, Jerry, is this a real person? - That would be one representative Steve Holland. - Yes. And I was like, "Is this a real person?" He said, "Yep." So do you think that politics have become less personality driven or has social media and national politics just simply change the kind of personality that succeeds? - Very perceptive question. I guess I would say that I don't think politics is less personality driven and my exhibit would be Donald Trump. - Yeah. - From my perspective, and I'm sure plenty of people think this is a disparaging comment, but I just intend it to be a reason for the answer that I've given. Donald Trump does not have any identifiable worldview, any system of beliefs or principles that guide his decision making that is apparent to me. - He's a legend to himself. - And yes. - And huge swaths of the American populists are allegiance to him. Notwithstanding that there's no way to predict from one day to the next what position you will take with respect to critical issues. And so to me, that's the ultimate example that personality politics still are alive and well in the United States. No question exacerbated now by the use of social media and we're about to see how it's exacerbated by the use of AI. - Yeah. I'm your host, Ellen, and I'm here with Jerry Nash and Andy Taggart talking about the third edition of Mississippi politics, the struggle for power in 1976 to 2026. So we were just talking about our politics more influenced by personality than they used to be or not so much anymore. And Andy was just sharing that he thinks that personality is kind of the major driving force in today's politics as evidenced by the allegiance to Donald Trump, who you don't know from one day to the next, which way he's gonna go. And so Jerry, what are you? Is this where we all are both gonna agree? - I think Andy is correct that it's sort of personality driven, but it's driven within the confines of the Republican party. And so in that sense, I will continue. continue to contend that party is the driving force. That in the old days, personalities matter the whole lot. But again, in the old days, all of those personalities were within the white Democratic party. And so candidates could feel free to, for lack of a better term, let their hair down because they knew the contest was gonna be within, their friends within the white Democratic party. In the same way that politicians may use their personality to drive a public policy outcome or a political outcome, they're doing it within the Democratic party or the Republican party. I just think in today's world, your partisan affiliation sort of, for lack of a better term, Andy Taggart, trumps it all. - Mm-hmm, that's very clever, Jerry. - And what we don't have, except in very limited examples, and they all seem to find themselves losing primaries or retiring in despair is people of significant influence who are willing to say my party has lost its mind. It just does somebody in both parties on a pretty regular basis needs to stand up and say, are you all completely crazy? - So, Andy, you commented on a photo that I posted on Instagram the other day where I'm sitting on top of a ladder in front of a fence. My husband and I got home from a vacation late Saturday night and Greg came in, he goes, "Ellen, I think, you know, "so and so are back your neighbors, they're fighting." And so me being Nazi, I went back there and I kinda listened for a little bit and I hear 'em, it's three people and they're talking about politics and they're really going at each other and so I get a little closer and then I kind of feel my in and I'm like, hey, let me get in on this and they hear me and they start laughing. And the husband passes a ladder over the fence to me and I put it up and I get up there and I sit and I talk to 'em. And I said pretty much that same thing, a version of that same thing, Andy, and I said, we have fallen in, you know, victim of allowing the fringes to define the whole of everything and I just said that's, yeah, I fully agree with you. - Well, it's a really important thing and Bill Clinton, who was one of the great politicians of our day, notwithstanding his politics and some personal choices that he made, understood this very point and that is why he was able to win election against the first George Bush and then re-election handily. Is he understood that the reason Democrats have been losing is because they had gone crazy and they were running as hard to the left as they could. Republicans now are running, I'm not even sure I could say it's hard to the right but it's as crazy as we can. Democrats are again running as hard to the left as they can and I hate to say we need another Bill Clinton to emerge because I don't admire Bill Clinton but he understood this point for sure. - Yeah. Well, so now I wanna talk, you just kind of segwayed into something I wanted to ask on both of you. Is there a Mississippi politician whose political skill y'all think has been underestimated because people focus on whether they liked him or didn't like him much, or them, her, is there, yeah, is there a Mississippi politician that you think was underestimated but had great political skill but they were maybe just not likable. To feel like being likable is a pretty critical thing to being a successful politician. Maybe not. - I guess I would need some time to think about that. - Yeah, that's not an easy question. I was prepared to answer it until you said not being likable. I do think there are some pretty good examples of people that played critically important roles that might not have been valued or recognized at the time as being important as they are and one example I'll offer is Philip Gunn. - Yeah. - Obviously he was speaker, he's the first Republican speaker in the modern era. He certainly was well known but generally speaking, you wouldn't immediately tick off Philip Gunn because one of the most influential political figures in Mississippi in the past 10 years, but you should. I mean, he really was. He was at the helm in the speaker's chair for all of the big ticket items that got out of the legislature over the course of the past 10 years. And of course, most notably from my perspective at least, absolutely led the charge on the change to the new flag. But there are many, many other significant policy matters in which he was a driving force but for which probably did not get the kind of public notoriety that the quality of the work deserved. - Yeah. - Hard to argue with that. - Yeah, you will get no argument for me on that either, Andy. So to close out, I would just wanna ask you all this. So after spending such a significant time studying Mississippi politics, are y'all more optimistic or less optimistic about Mississippi than you are when you began the first edition 20 years ago? And why? - I'll let you go first. - I have a genuinely optimistic worldview. - Yeah. - I think tomorrow's gonna be better and next year is gonna be better. And I still think that the more we know about ourselves, the more we appreciate our own frailties, the more we know about the body politic, the more we know about its frustrations and its weaknesses. But nonetheless, we have recreated a culture that is by and large, healthy in a state that is notorious for having had the worst possible culture in our fairly recent past. - Yeah. - In my mind, that's a huge reason for optimism. And then you add to that that it looks as though lots of economic indicators and educational indicators are pointing in the right direction. I'm an optimist. - When Andy and I were into the book, the first two or three months, Ellen, we realized that we could not start the book with the campaign of 1976. We couldn't, we couldn't just plop readers into January of 1976. We had to give them context. In order to give them context, we'd spend a significant amount of time writing a history of the Mississippi Republican Party and a history of the Mississippi Democratic Party, which took us all the way back to the end of Reconstruction. And one cannot read the history of those two parties. One cannot read the history of Mississippi and what Mississippi was prior to Bill Waller's election in 1971 and realized the amazing progress that's taken place with the transformation of African Americans into the political process and the transformation of Republican authors into the political process and the way that the process is more democratic for a whole variety of reasons. So there's been, if you look at it over the last 90 years, you can't help but be optimistic at the progress that's made. And then you interview 80 people who talk to you about changing the state flag and building a civil rights museum and you interview candidates who are running because they really do wanna make the state a better place. And once again, you can't help but leave all of those conversations feeling good about the world. - Yeah. - All right, y'all, I could keep on going about this but that's gonna close the book for today. Thank you both so much for being here. I really appreciate the work that y'all have done helping, you know, Mississippi and kind of synthesize our political history and, you know, making it something that's very readable for people, you know, I think it's intimidating when you look at a book that covers, you know, the politics over 50 years but then you start reading it and it's, it's a pretty good read. - It's kind of you to say. - So, well, again, that'll close today and y'all come back next week for another episode of It's Lich Y'all on MPB ThinkRadio. - This is an MPB ThinkRadio podcast. To hear previous shows, visit mpbonline.org or download the MPB Public Radio app to listen on your iPhone or Android phone on demand. [BLANK_AUDIO]