"He Ain't Kinky. He's My Governor."

At least that's what the bumper sticker on a truck cruising I-10 outside Beaumont said.

I was surprised to see that Kinky's campaign to be the first independent governor of Texas since Sam Houston had reached outside the Austin area. I know he's been all over the state campaigning, but I assumed it was only in Austin and perhaps the Hill Country that anyone would have heard much about him.

Kinky has been asking, "How hard can it be?" for nearly a year now, and based on Governor Perry's half-assed performance, I can only assume that it's not that hard. Come and Take it! has a nice piece on why he has an uphill battle (assuming he can get on the ballot, which is a chore in and of itself), but provides hope that someone will have the backbone, honesty, and wit to serve up the public humiliation that Rick Perry so richly deserves.

This post is provoked by finally listening to an audiobook that my dad loaned me over the summer. The book is Kinky's The Great Psychedelic Armadillo Picnic: A "Walk" in Austin and so far (about half a CD in) it's an amusing, irreverent, and fairly accurate picture of the Austin that was (from the days of founder President Mirabeau B. Lamar through Willie, Stevie, and on towards Dell), is, and will be as told by someone who loves this town deeply (and unfortunately read by someone who does not pronounce words like 'Guadalupe,' 'San Jacinto,' 'Burnet,' or 'Waylon' - as in Jennings - like he's spent much time here).

So to make a rambling post shorter, I was driving on Mopac yesterday, crossing the river and listening to the Kinkster spin the tale of Austin's founding and the tensions between Lamar and Sam Houston over whether or not this beautiful settlement on the river in the heart of Comanche country should be the capital of the republic, and I decided that Kinky is far more deserving of life in the governor's mansion than Perry or whatever poor sacrificial lamb the feckless Texas Democrats throw out there. Kinky understands the Texan love of big stories, big myths and big talk that gets Texas politicians elected, but he also seems to get the fact that we live in the modern world and we have very real, very big problems that the Republicans have shown they have no interest in or ability to solve.

I don't know if Kinky can solve them, but at least he seems honest about trying when he talks about them. And he's funny. And listening to his book, he reminds me all over again why I love Austin.

As his campaign materials ask, "Why the Hell not?"

Tagged: politics, books, austin, texas