The Progressive Interview - Jim Hightower

Ditching journalism to return to electoral politics, he twice won public office as agriculture commissioner of Texas in the 1980s. Touted as a potential Senator or more, Hightower lost his bid to be elected ag commissioner a third time after a certain Republican strategist named Karl Rove engaged in some dirty tricks.

Hightower then took to the airwaves, doing a national radio program from the Chat and Chew Café in Austin. Today, he still does radio commentaries that air around the country. In addition, he puts out The Hightower Lowdown, a newsletter with more than 100,000 subscribers.

He's also a best-selling author. His previous books include There's Nothing in the Middle of the Road but Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos and If the Gods Had Meant Us to Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates. His latest is Thieves in High Places: They've Stolen Our Country and It's Time to Take It Back. (In Thieves, he mentions a telling comment George W. made at a dinner of his fat cat contributors back in 2000. Said Bush: "This is an impressive crowd. The haves and the have-mores. Some call you the elite. I call you my base.")

Interview -

Q: What do you make of the donkeys in the race now?

Hightower: I'm actually encouraged because at least we are having the Democratic flag raised to various heights by most of these candidates. Dennis Kucinich has it at full tilt, all the way up there flying high and proud. Howard Dean, on issues like health care, on the war, on gay and lesbian issues, is right in the President's face and proud to be a Democrat. And he's tapped into something huge, which is this discontent that is searching for some home. The significant thing about the Dean phenomenon is not Dean; it's the phenomenon. And he's being carried by it.

Q: I'm not sure he fully understands it.

Hightower: And I'm not sure, either. But it has carried him forward, and he's adjusting as he rides that wave. He's taking more and more progressive positions. Gephardt's good on a number of issues. John Kerry, I love how he's standing in front of that aircraft carrier when he made his Presidential announcement pointing out that he had actually been on one before, unlike our President. Al Sharpton gets ridiculed and set aside, but he says good things and is saying them well.

At least we're going to have a debate this time. These issues are not going to be shoved down like in past Presidential campaigns. And I do believe that Bush is a one-term President.

Q: Why do you think that?

Hightower: Because in the 2000 election he got every vote he was going to get. He ran against a divided and very weak Democratic Party. He used soft phrases like "compassionate conservative" and "leave no child behind" that appealed to a lot of people. But since then his policies are absolutely nutty, bullgoose loopy, and completely out of the mainstream of what Americans believe. He's now got trouble within his own party: Republican moderates who don't like what he's done in the environmental area, who do not approve of this perpetual war and bloated military budget, Republicans who don't like Ashcroft's attack on civil liberties.