Media Musings: Bragg leaves void that can’t be filled
I loved John Bragg.
He was my teacher, advisor, friend, confidant, and role model for what a man of unquestioned integrity can do in political life. More than 60 years ago, he graduated from Middle Tennessee State University and fell in love with newspapers and the smell of ink on paper. In so many ways, he reminded me of the early days of the upstart nation when printers and writers and politicians often were the same people.
His death leaves a void in Tennessee public life that will never be filled because he was the only powerful state politician that everyone finally recognized as a statesman, that rare breed of man who knows that political power must be shared.
I was producing a mini-documentary on his life years ago for the MTSU Foundation and followed him with a cameraman as he made his rounds. Early that afternoon he met with House members about road construction and was the long-serving chairman of the all-powerful House Ways and Means Committee.
“Mr. Bragg,” a representative from Williamson County said forcefully, “We need roads in my county because of growth and can’t get any. Why is that?”
It was a natural opening for him. “Why,” he offered, “that’s because so many of you are Republicans.” Mr. Bragg’s face was alive with his famous smile and the hearing erupted in laughter. Williamson County got the roads it needed.
During his years he was the greatest expert on the state budget. He was a fiscal conservative and a social liberal, a moderate when that word was not twisted into the current casting of it as pejorative. He would help his colleagues who needed a scapegoat by letting them go home and say Mr. Bragg struck most of the golf courses from the budget and that they had given their best effort. That was a year it seemed every politician wanted a golf course.
His love affair with MTSU, in particular, and post-secondary education generally, was real. He fought to bring about greater equity of funding for state colleges and universities and he wanted every child to be able to go to college or vocational schools. More than anyone I ever knew in political life, he deeply understood how impoverished Tennessee was and continues to be.
For seven years, we worked together to find a way to build a mass communication building at MTSU, which is now named for him. He found a brilliant tactic by dividing the funding into three years of appropriations, and at the end of the run, as we stood alone late one afternoon in the new building, I suggested that the building was already full. “I know,” he said, “but we will just have to wait for another day.”
His love of ideas was real and he was always telling me of a new book he’d read. He wrote letters to his constituents on Friday nights. He answered his phone at home.
Finally, there’s his last great act of political courage. In the twilight of his years in the legislature, he traveled the state fighting for an income tax. The legislature itself has demonized the income tax and now radical right talk radio and powerful wealthy individuals have defeated it. The fiscal crisis will be back in a few years. Mr. Bragg knew the only way to find the dollars to really lift the state from its poverty and star-crossed history was through such a tax.
That was typical of him. To the last hour, journalist, politician, writer, statesman, he loved the power of politics and the press to improve the lives of all. He once lamented to me, “You know, Ed, it takes so very much to build a perfect society.” That was his frustration at not having the dollars to help the state at all levels and knowing they would probably never be there.
As I write these final words, I do so through tears, and feel so very, very lonely. Good bye, John Bragg.
(Ed Kimbrell is a professor in MTSU’s School of Journalism.)