Dwain Northey (Gen X)

It’s midterm election season again, which is an interesting name for something that is still, in fact, an election. I suppose calling it a midterm makes it sound like we’re taking a break from democracy to check our progress, like a teacher handing out a report card halfway through the semester. Except instead of grades, we get campaign ads, attack commercials, and politicians promising to fix the exact problems they’ve been in charge of creating.

And nowhere is this more entertaining than Texas.

Take Greg Abbott. The man has been governor of Texas since 2015. That’s going on twelve years of executive authority by the time the next election rolls around. Twelve years. Long enough for a child to enter kindergarten, graduate high school, and develop a strong opinion about whether the state’s government is doing a good job.

And yet here we are, listening to Abbott campaign on the promise that he’s going to fix things.

Fix what?

That’s the part I’m having trouble with.

Texas has had Republican leadership in the governor’s mansion for decades. The state legislature has been controlled by Republicans for decades. The House and Senate have had plenty of time to pass the policies they wanted, fund the programs they supported, and address the problems they claimed were important.

This isn’t a situation where the opposition party has been secretly running the state from a basement somewhere. Republicans have been in charge. They have controlled the agenda, the budgets, the appointments, and the direction of state government.

So when the governor stands up and says, “I’m going to fix Texas,” I have to wonder whether he’s talking about the same Texas he’s been governing.

Because if the state is broken, who exactly has been holding the wrench?

And if everything is going great, as politicians always seem to tell us when they’re defending their record, then what needs fixing?

Apparently, the answer is whatever the next campaign commercial says needs fixing.

This is the political equivalent of a contractor showing up at your house after twelve years, looking at the leaking roof, and saying, “Don’t worry. I’ve got a plan.”

You might reasonably ask why the roof is still leaking.

He might explain that the previous contractor was difficult, the weather was unpredictable, and the tools were expensive. He might point out that the roof would have been worse if he hadn’t been there.

And then he’d ask you to hire him again.

That’s the part of politics that continues to amaze me. We have somehow accepted the idea that the person in charge of a problem is the best person to solve it, even when the problem has been sitting there for years.

Not because they have demonstrated that they can solve it, but because they have demonstrated that they can talk about solving it.

And voters seem willing to believe that the next four years will be different from the last twelve, even when the person making that promise has been in the same office the entire time.

Maybe that’s the real meaning of a midterm election. It’s not halfway through a term of office. It’s halfway through the voters’ attention span.

We forget who was responsible. We forget who controlled the legislature. We forget which party had the votes. We forget which policies were passed and which ones were blocked. Then somebody puts up a new campaign sign, says “fixing Texas,” and suddenly we’re all supposed to believe the past twelve years were just a rough draft.

I’m not saying voters have to vote against Republicans. I’m saying voters should at least make them explain their record.

If you’ve been in power for twelve years and the state is still facing the same problems you promised to solve when you first took office, maybe the question isn’t whether you need more time.

Maybe the question is whether you’ve earned it.

And if your answer is that you need another term to fix what’s broken, I have one simple question:

Fix what?

Because if you broke it, you should probably start there.