GET IT DONE

A rootin’-tootin’ life in politics, Texas-style.

Barnes is the real deal, the child of hardscrabble farmers who had him milking the cows at 6 years old—the source of the exhortation that is his book’s title. Years of that work convinced him that he didn’t really want to milk cows any more, and so he took the bull by the horns and ran for state legislature. “I was twenty-one. I had no money. No political connections. No resume. No accomplishments to tout. What was I thinking?” he writes. To everyone’s surprise, he won. To his own surprise, a few years later, at 26, he became the youngest speaker of the house in state history then took office as lieutenant governor. That was a different Texas, though, blue as a bluebonnet, when the likes of Ann Richards, Lyndon Johnson, and Sam Rayburn held sway. It was also a Texas where party politics hadn’t frozen the process, where Barnes could, for instance, enlist Ross Perot to get Medicare passed and a system for it put in place—after which Perot made a fortune selling his software to other states. Barnes even has a few good words to say about Richard Nixon, whom Rayburn had characterized as evil: “If he’s elected, he’ll destroy the presidency.” Barnes has no gentle feelings about the current occupant of the White House, writing, “at eighty-eight, I’d like to see the end of this ruthless regime before I get out of here.” Stuffed with cameo characters from John Wayne to Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, and Ted Kennedy, Barnes’ generally good-natured narrative is full of pointers in practical politics and suggested reforms: institute nonpartisan primaries, which “would dilute the power of a Trumpian figure”; establish term limits; retire Supreme Court justices at 75; and more.

A primer in an old-school politics that accomplished much.