Guest
Commentary :
State politics and economic growth
by David Bowen
It
was delightful to see so many Delta friends at the recent
Boo Ferriss tribute in Jackson, presented by the Mississippi
Sports Foundation and Hall of Fame.
No sports figure in Mississippi more deserves such an honor,
which includes a special trophy in his name to be awarded
each year to the outstanding college player in our state.
The keynote speaker was an old friend of mine, David Halberstam,
who has won a Pulitzer Prize and has authored twenty books.
Halberstam also spoke later in the week at the dedication
of the William F. Winter Archives and History Building in
Jackson.
I spent. the last year as president of the Mississippi Historical
Society and worked closely with the Archives and History
staff, several of whom also serve as staff for the Historical
Society.
Halberstam, who moved from being a journalist in Mississippi
to the New York Times and finally to becoming a distinguished
historian, has covered a lot of politics around the nation.
He said privately during his visit here (and he has a daughter
teaching in Greenville) that he has never seen such a dirty
campaign as the one just completed.
I don’t think he was blaming one candidate or one
party but describing the spirit of the campaign in many
of the races. Both sides, especially in the governor’s
and lieutenant governor’s races, set records for vituperation
and mudslinging,
A major argument, to oversimplify, was that one gubernatorial
candidate-accused the other of being on speaking terms with
Mexico and China, and the other said his opponent was on
speaking terms with Bill Clinton and Al Gore.
The one thing they probably agreed on but could not say
publicly was that neither man as governor would be able
to have much impact on tax revenues, unemployment or economic
growth, since these are principally determined by the national
economy.
Mississippi governors and the Legislature have done as good
a job as anybody in offering inducements to outside companies
to move here. If they have not come in as large numbers,as
to Texas or Florida or Arizona,it is for reasons of climate
and location, which we cannot control, but also it is heavily
about education.
The competition today among states to attract industry is
about who has a better public education system, a better
college and university system and a better trained, more
skilled, better disciplined work force, not just the cheapest
labor rates.
We have serious problems in all those areas. Even in the
best of times we have difficulty finding the revenues to
address these problems.
Let us hope our new governor, renowned for his lobbying
skills, can use his powers of persuasion with business,
industry, labor, the Legislature and the Federal Government
to help pull Mississippi out of the ditch we are currently
in and prove me wrong, that a governor can’t do much
about the economy. DBJ
(David
Bowen, a Jackson resident, is a former second district congressman.)
