In Sunday's column, I wrote about how close Arkansas is to achieving something special--transforming itself into a state that's to middle America what Colorado is to the American West; a less crowded place that offers former urban residents abundant outdoor recreational opportunities, an emphasis on the arts, well-interpreted heritage sites and cuisine that uses local products in innovative ways.
Such a place not only would attract more tourists, it also would draw the smart, talented new residents our state needs.
I added a caveat: "Unfortunately, we have a long history in Arkansas of not taking advantage of such opportunities."
We're on the verge of missing this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. What happened? Busy Arkansas business and civic leaders stopped running for public office. Not only that, as they concentrated on growing their businesses, they stopped being involved in raising money for quality candidates. We began seeing fringe candidates win.
Rather than the bankers, lawyers and small-business owners we once sent to the Legislature, we elected people who had never found success in the private sector. They needed the meager legislative salary to live on.
We've always had colorful political characters. Those of us in the newspaper business loved covering them, but voters would make sure they were defeated in their party primaries. They provided a laugh or two, but did no real harm.
Once we started electing them, we suffered the consequences. Take last year's regular legislative session. Fringe members hijacked the agenda. With their colleagues unable to find the political courage to stand up to them, the result was the worst session in my lifetime.
One longtime state Capitol observer referred to it as "government by yahoo."
Charles Sykes recently wrote an article for Politico in which he noted that the late William F. Buckley Jr. "made conservatism intellectually respectable by saving it from the wackos and the demagogues."
I was among the college students attracted in 1980 to Ronald Reagan's presidential candidacy. In the process, we wound up supporting (and, in my case, working for) other Republican candidates during the 1980s and 1990s. Sykes noted how Rush Limbaugh, along with media figures and candidates who tried to imitate him, wound up giving "it right back again" to the "wackos and demagogues."
We've certainly seen that happen in Arkansas, where the GOP became the majority party over the course of three election cycles beginning in 2010. Those of us who were traditional Republicans soon learned that we should have been careful what we wished for.
George Will, a writer I read religiously along with Buckley when I was a college student, said in an interview last year with The Wall Street Journal: "I've always been averse to loudmouths and bullies, probably because my father, a philosophy professor at the University of Illinois, was mild, rational and measured in his judgments. He was my model of manliness."
"Loudmouths and bullies" are what we see too much of in Arkansas. If we don't start turning them out of office, it won't matter how much we spend on outdoor recreation and the arts. Those smart people we desperately need to move here--people who otherwise find Arkansas attractive these days--will stay away.
Thus our first task is to elect people who genuinely care more about our state's future than their political careers. The nationalization of Arkansas politics must stop. We're too small and too poor for rank partisanship. It must be Arkansas first and the GOP or the Democratic Party second.
Party affiliation no longer matters to me in state elections. I'm looking for those who care about moving Arkansas forward regardless of party. If we don't do that, nothing else will matter.
If we do somehow turn things around, here are other steps we must take:
• Provide the government assistance needed to turbocharge the advancements I outlined Sunday in the areas of outdoor recreation and the arts. The hundreds of millions of dollars being spent by the private and nonprofit sectors are impressive for a state this size. It's hard to get government to focus on what legislative demagogues will scream are "luxuries," but such investments will change the trajectory of Arkansas and lead to private-sector spending that will increase per capita income. An example of what I'm talking about is the Greenhouse Outdoor Recreation Program, a business incubation initiative for those offering products and services in the outdoor recreation sector. The program is operated by the University of Arkansas' Office of Entrepreneurship and Innovation.
• Emphasize broadband deployment in rural areas. The state has a rare chance to move the needle in this area thanks to hundreds of millions of dollars it has received in federal pandemic-relief funds. Broadband is to rural Arkansas in this century what electricity was to the last century. Those smart newcomers I've been talking about will demand it.
• Attract more out-of-state capital. The Walton family is doing amazing things when it comes to quality of life for Arkansans, but they can't do it alone. In what has traditionally been a capital-poor state, it's more important than ever that we recruit outside investors, especially for the southern half of Arkansas. For instance, most Arkansas-based investors have refused to take a chance on beautiful old downtown buildings in Little Rock, Hot Springs and Pine Bluff. There might be outside visionaries who can see the potential that our own folks overlook.
Senior Editor Rex Nelson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He's also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.