Big, Hot, Cheap, and Right: What America Can Learn from the Strange Genius of Texas

April 6, 2013

How Texas Became Texas and Why It Matters

By BRYAN BURROUGH

AS a Texas-raised journalist, I can tell you two things with confidence about my native state. One, its economy has been humming nicely for years. Two, this appears to greatly offend a certain breed of Northern writer, several of whom have descended on the state in an attempt to rebut stories of a “Texas miracle.” Their reports, Erica Grieder writes, have contributed to “a widespread impression that Texas is corrupt, callous, racist, theocratic, stupid, belligerent, and most of all, dangerous.”

This is nothing new, as most any Texan will tell you. But Ms. Grieder, a onetime correspondent for The Economist who now works at Texas Monthly, and a Texan herself, has written a smart little book that counters much of this silliness, and explains why the Texas economy is thriving. It’s called “Big, Hot, Cheap and Right: What America Can Learn from the Strange Genius of Texas” (PublicAffairs, $26.99). The sad truth, alas, is that it’s probably a lot easier to understand the successes of Texas than it would be to duplicate them.

What might be copied, Ms. Grieder indicates, is the so-called Texas model — that is, a weak state government with few taxes and fewer regulations and services. It would be far harder to replicate the state’s civic DNA, which features traits that can be traced to its decade, beginning in 1836, as a stand-alone nation (independent, suspicious of Washington), the late-1800s cowboy era (self-reliant, fraternal) and the 20th-century introduction of oil and entrepreneurialism (pro-business, skeptical of government). Those values, Ms. Grieder says, created a populace ideal for economic growth: “pragmatic, fiscally conservative, socially moderate and slightly disengaged.”This is a refreshing book on many levels. Outside writers have been regularly caricaturing the state since the novelist Edna Ferber introduced America to postwar Texas with “Giant” in 1952. The canon ranges from “The Super-Americans,” by John Bainbridge (1961), to “As Texas Goes … : How the Lone Star State Hijacked the American Agenda,” by Gail Collins, a New York Times columnist (2012). Ms. Grieder’s is the rare book that takes stock of the Texas model without ridiculing many of its traditions and politicians.

I tend to look askance at an analysis that attributes a company’s or a state’s success to events two centuries ago, but Ms. Grieder’s history lessons are persuasive. Texas’s laissez-faire mix of weak government, low taxes and scant regulations is deeply rooted in its 1876 Constitution, which was an attempt to vehemently dismantle an oppressive post-Civil War government of radical reconstructionists. Texas business interests flourished after turn-of-the-century legislators passed an early antitrust law, which kept much of its oil and natural resources squarely under local control.

Historically, Ms. Grieder writes: “Texas wasn’t a straightforward pro-business state. It was (and is) pro-Texas business.”

More recently, the state’s economic boom has been a mix of luck and good planning. Strict lending laws allowed Texas to dodge the worst of the housing collapse, while the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement was a boon to the state’s export sector.

But “the secret ingredient,” Ms. Grieder writes, has been the industrial policy of Gov. Rick Perry, offering a generous broth of subsidies and incentives that Texas has used to attract hundreds of businesses that have richly diversified its traditional energy-based economy. This has had the added benefit of insulating Texas from the ups and downs of oil prices.

“The Texas model isn’t an accident, in other words, even if the state Constitution does call for a very stark version of it,” Ms. Grieder says. “Texas has a long tradition of looking outside the government for support — and often finding it. That predates the Texas revolution and was reinforced by the rise of the cattle kingdom and the oil booms.”

Systems and laws aside, Ms. Grieder emphasizes, the crucial component in the Texas boom has been its people, who tend — forget stereotypes — to be tolerant, optimistic and results-oriented. It’s no accident that Houston, a city sometimes caricatured as a haven for obnoxious right-wingers, in 2009 became the country’s largest city to elect an openly gay mayor. The state has benefited from waves of immigration, beginning after the Civil War and persisting to this day.

As outsiders, successful immigrants tend to be hard-working and self-sufficient, and the state’s pro-business culture has made their jobs easier at every turn. Non-Texans tend to look at glib right-wing Texas politicians like Governor Perry — and many others — and assume that the Texas electorate must be similar.

In fact, Ms. Grieder demonstrates, Texas voters are notoriously ambivalent about politics, in large part because the state Constitution gives politicians so little power. As a result, even the worst Texas leaders tend to do little damage.

“Texans are, ultimately, a pragmatic people,” she writes. “Politicians and their excesses can be justified by the economy alone. And that’s one area where no one’s been disappointed. So maybe it doesn’t matter if the state’s leaders breathe fire, pray for rain, turn up at Tea Party rallies and spend all day suing the federal government. How crazy is that, really? Texas is a pretty good place to live; that’s why several million people have moved here since the beginning of this century.”

This is a good book, and Ms. Grieder’s clear, vivid writing makes it downable in a single afternoon. I have only one bone to pick. Ms. Grieder has graciously mentioned a book of mine in her footnotes. Unfortunately, she misspells my last name. And my first. But one can overlook minor errors. This is a promising debut from a promising young author.

Big, Hot, Cheap, and Right: What America Can Learn from the Strange Genius of Texas [Hardcover]

Erica Grieder (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 23, 2013

Texas may well be America’s most controversial state. Evangelicals dominate the halls of power, millions of its people live in poverty, and its death row is the busiest in the country. Skeptical outsiders have found much to be offended by in the state’s politics and attitude. And yet, according to journalist (and Texan) Erica Grieder, the United States has a great deal to learn from Texas.

In Big, Hot, Cheap, and Right, Grieder traces the political history of a state that was always larger than life. From its rowdy beginnings, Texas has combined a long-standing suspicion of government intrusion with a passion for business. Looking to the present, Greider assesses the unique mix of policies on issues like immigration, debt, taxes, regulation, and energy, which together have sparked a bonafide Texas Miracle of job growth. While acknowledging that it still has plenty of twenty-first-century problems to face, she finds in Texas a model of governance whose power has been drastically underestimated. Her book is a fascinating exploration of America’s underrated powerhouse.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Chris Hayes, MSNBC Host and author of Twilight of the Elites

“Thirty years from now there’s a good chance that most of America will look like Texas and somehow, improbably, using some strange dark prose magic, Erica Grieder has managed to convince me that might actually not be so bad. Written with verve and nuance, this is a fascinating, provocative read. If there were a book like this for each state I’d read every one.”

Bill Bishop, co-author of The Big Sort: Why The Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart

“Texas isn’t the uninhabitable right wing bully East Coast howlers imagine and it’s not the open range paradise described by free market myth-makers. Erica Grieder describes the state as it is — a place shaped (and misshapen) by its past and by the entirely human characters who live there. She is a sure-footed guide, pointing out what is to be admired and warning when we had best watch our step.”

Publishers Weekly

“Journalist Grieder pens a primer on Texas that is serious and lighthearted in turn. She might as well have referred to the ‘strange genesis’ of Texas in her subtitle, as she runs through historical highlights and lowlights from the state’s beginnings to explain its present. Grieder’s account includes notably bizarre episodes, including the 1951 election in which both the governor and the state attorney general ran on both Democratic and Republican tickets, with the Democratic incarnations of each pulling easy victories…. Anyone curious about or proud of Texas will find something of interest, as will readers of current politics.”

Kirkus Reviews

“In this brisk and sassy counterweight to recent book-length complaints about Texas, Grieder challenges common prejudices about the state and insists that Texas is a better place than people expect… [Grieder] delivers an extensive, perceptive analysis of the state’s politics—how it turned Republican in the 1990s and the prospects for a growing Hispanic population to bring it back into the Democratic column…. Due to the fact that Texas is thriving while much of America struggles, it might be wise to consider what Texas is doing right.”

Publishers Weekly

“Journalist Grieder pens a primer on Texas that is serious and lighthearted in turn. She might as well have referred to the ‘strange genesis’ of Texas in her subtitle, as she runs through historical highlights and lowlights from the state’s beginnings to explain its present. Grieder’s account includes notably bizarre episodes, including the 1951 election in which both the governor and the state attorney general ran on both Democratic and Republican tickets, with the Democratic incarnations of each pulling easy victories…. Anyone curious about or proud of Texas will find something of interest, as will readers of current politics.”

About the Author

Erica Grieder is a senior editor at Texas Monthly. From 2007-2012, she covered Texas as the southwest correspondent for The Economist, to which she still contributes. Her writing has also appeared in the New York Times, theSpectator, the Atlantic, Foreign Policy, and the New Republic. She lives in Austin.