I see that Governor Parson has written a book. It will be released next March but some excerpts have been made available to the press. He calls it No Turnin’ Back.
I look forward to buying one. Maybe he’ll have a signing at Downtown Book & Toy. I’ll be near the front of the line, I hope. Ernie and Hazel, the bookstore cats, probably will have to be locked away because the line is likely to stretch a good distance down High Street.
It’s going to be a historic book because Mike Parson has been a central figure during some major points of history. He came into statewide office as Lt. Governor, set to fill the role as Senate President and preside over the chamber in which he had just served eight years, while Eric Greitens careened throughout the capitol as a governor who antagonized most of the people he needed to make into allies.
Then came the historic day when Greitens announced his resignation as governor, getting out of town before he could be run out of town. Suddenly Mike Parson—who was tending to his cattle on his southwest Missouri farm that day—became THE top guy in state government.
Then Covid hit. And for stress-laden month after month, Parson had to steer the state through shortages, uncertainties, and deaths.
We haven’t asked him but we have asked several former governors about the toughest decisions they had to make. The most frequent answer has been that it was the decision to allow an execution to go ahead.
No governor serves without making mistakes. Some are mistakes they know pretty quickly they made. Others will emerge with the passage of time that places conduct within context. We don’t have much doubt that Governor Paron will recognize what he could have done differently or done better. But at the time, somebody had to do something, and once done there is no turning back, which is why the title is appropriate.
I wish more governors had done what he is doing. History will paint its own picture. But self-portraits have value, too.
Jim Spainhower, who was a former State Representative and later a two-term State Treasurer and a 1980 primary election challenger to Joe Teasdale, was also a minister of my denomination, the Christian Church/Disciples of Christ. He wrote a book called Pulpit, Pew, and Politics.
He told me when my first book was published, “Now you can start your prayers by saying ‘Oh though who also hast written a book.’”
Mike Parson is a man of faith, as you will hear if you click on the two-parts of an interview Ashley Byrd of the Missourinet did with him. He, too, will soon be able to begin his prayers with those words.
Maybe we’ll greet each other at the book-signing with those words.
He talks with the Missourinet’s Ashley Byrd about the book and about his life and his governorship on these links:
(We thank our friends at The Missourinet for the photo.)