Why the Texas Railroad Commissioner is the most important campaign in 2008

Railroad Commissioner Candidate Mark Thompson came before the Texas Democratic State Convention like a Pilgrim lost in the big city. Uncomfortable in front of a microphone and unaccustomed to speaking to a crowd, Mark had to sort of squeeze in between unity speeches, to try to explain just what a Railroad Commissioner is, and why we should care. In his disarming sincerity, Mark Thompson made the most important speech of the whole show.

Party Unity was the message of the day and everyone was trying hard really hard to stay "on message", so attendees were uplifted by passionate calls for lower gas prices and less Republicans. If someone had strayed off message, they might would have called the activists out on their individual convictions in an attempt to forge their singular concerns into a common cause of Progressive economic democracy: break the glass ceiling, diffuse discrimination, open access to health care, take back our country; a common vision of the political party as an instrument to protect the lives and livelihood of citizens, with the diverse party factions pulling the same harness. Unity.

The problem with this lovely dream is the wee conflict between the Progressive ideals of economic democracy and those of the corporate model which has become the facts-on-the-ground of the Democratic party ever since Jimmy Carter's deregulation of natural gas, trucking and airlines, presumably to trump Nixon's first big step of unleashing deregulation on health care and the dollar. After 12 long years of all manner of deregulation, Democrats were led out of the kinder, gentler desert by Joe Lieberman's Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) which promised third-way prosperity in exchange for unquestioning worship of the market model. Bill Clinton, (who despite this I still count among my friends), carried forward the DLC economic agenda, and delivered NAFTA. Now our Progressive roots are as a distant memory, and so seems only natural when a son-of-a-mill-worker bunks with the hedge funds, Hillary hangs with the day-traders and a-change-you-can-believe-in cashes in with the Chicago Board of Trade. Even the yellow dogs seem to prefer a market based approach over who gets to sleep on the porch. Some folks think the Progressive movement is part of the MPEG protocol.

Economic democracy of the Progressive movement has become party window dressing. All Democrats talk the talk, but most prefer to leave it up to the "marketplace of ideas" to decide who gets a place in the tent, and in the end, the corporations are the market makers. Apart from holdouts in the Labor wing, most of us act like Prophets of the Market Economy, casting reform proposals in terms of market based solutions, from cap and gown to cap and trade: let the market rule. We distinguish ourselves from Republicans in that we Democrats promise to bring fairness and "transparency" to the corporatist model of government. So there's the rub: an authentic call for unity would force to the surface this long simmering conflict between the in-markets-we-trust corporatist movement, and the not-dead-yet Progressive approach to reform, with its emphasis on public infrastructure and a rational regulation of commerce.

Without intending a challenge to the corporatist leadership of the party, Mark Thompson had it down cold, and laid it out, plain. "The Texas Railroad Commission was created in the Golden Age of the Texas Progressives". I think it never occurred to many of us that there ever was such a thing as a Golden Age of Texas Progressives. So why did they do it? "To keep the railroads from strangling the farmer, to protect their property from monopoly power". The railroad commission now oversees the oil and gas industry, where the Lord knows his work is yet undone. Since we don't have any railroads left, we don't need salvation from their rates, but we do need a party that is unified in the conviction to prevent the strangulation of public life by the hydra-headed monopoly powers of our times. Now we're talking unity.

The Texas Railroad Commissioner might not be the most important office up for election in 2008, but if Mark Thompson is the one who is speaking clearly of the vision of a Progressive economic democracy, then I guess he's running the most important campaign in the election.