Читать книгу Texas Got It Right! - Sam Wyly - Страница 9

Those of us who hail from Louisiana have always

been fascinated by the outsize ways of our neigh-

bors in Texas, with their wildcat economic style,

ten-gallon-hat personalities, and colorful populist

politicians of both parties. So it’s particularly excit-

ing for me to have the Texas mystique explained by

a native Louisiana guy who became a true Texan,

Sam Wyly. His coauthor—son Andrew—is also a

true Texan by choice, but one who hails from

California, which is a state that serves as a counter-

example to the Texas model.

Sam has grown six different companies to

billion-dollar valuations, so he realizes that the key

to the Texas success story is providing fertile ground

for entrepreneurs. We all know that Texas has been

an energy pioneer ever since 1937, when the

companies that became Chevron and ExxonMobil

began drilling offshore. Today that tradition contin-

ues with Texas as a pioneer of the shale-oil boom

and of wind farming. But Texas was also a birth-

place of the microchip. And that tech tradition

continues to flower now that Austin has become the

hot place for start-ups that connect creative think-

ing with technology.

In our times, the word trailblazer has become

such a cliché that we pay little heed to what it

means. Texans, however, have bred into their per-

sonalities the legacy of the true trailblazers:

those cow herders of the Texas plains who blazed

new trails and roads in order to get their livestock

to markets.

This business and entrepreneurial mind-set also

led to a tradition of political leaders who were not just

professional partisans but who instead knew how to be

dealmakers, in the tradition of Bob Strauss. In Califor-

nia, 80 percent of state legislators consider that role

their full-time occupation. For folks in the Texas legis-

lature, that figure is less than 2 percent. They tend,

instead, to be farmers, fire-fighters, car dealers, oil-

field workers, and business owners. In addition, Texas

politicians come in all stripes: progressives, populists,

libertarians, right-wing firebrands, and occasional rev-

olutionaries. The one thing most of them have in

common is that they are colorful.

The Wylys also celebrate—rather than stoke fears

about—the great migrations that have made Texas a

“majority-minority” state, one in which Hispanics,

blacks, and Asians make up a majority of the popula-

tion. In praising the largely Hispanic border area, the

Wylys write that it “is the most richly Texan of places,

because the people who live there know that opportu-

nity resides in what unites us and not what divides us.”

Even if you think that not everything about Texas

is perfect, and even if you love your own home state

more, this book is valuable. Colorful and fun, it is

bursting with little facts and big ideas. It all adds up

to an important celebration of the spicy mix of ingre-

dients—and the exuberance—that has made Texas

successful over the years. The state’s can-do spirit and

love of independent thinkers, innovators, and entre-

preneurs is something that could help kick up our

whole economy.

TEXAS GOT IT RIGHT!

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