Lee
This is Tokens. I'm Lee C. Camp.
In economics, there's something called the “sunk-cost fallacy”. This means if you invest a lot of money in, say, a new restaurant, you're much less likely to get out of it the more you have sunk into it, even if it's failing. To get out, you have to accept that the money is gone. It's wasted. It's not coming back to you, so you keep throwing good money after bad. I suspect that faith can be similar. The more of your life you spend - the more of yourself you invest - the harder it is to change when the evidence suggests your theology might be flawed. Perhaps we should call this the “sunk-suffering fallacy”.
The “sunk-suffering fallacy”, which yes, I did just invent here, points to one of the ways in which faith might make one more partisan or more sectarian. Faith requires you to invest a lot. It requires you to have a strong sense of the right and true. Then someone comes along, challenges all this, and our sunk suffering tempts us.
It tempts us to ignore the challenges, to ignore competing facts. To take seriously the other side threatens our sense of righteousness, which we derive from our suffering. To take seriously the other side on a particular argument may not be so much about a particular argument, but about our whole sense of self. So we will not let go of our convictions because there's so much at stake in our sunk sufferings. So we throw good suffering after bad. But are there some ways out of the “sunk-suffering fallacy”? Are there resources within Christian faith that might actually make it possible to cross partisan lines? Might Christian faith at least soften ideological partisanship?
Bill
There were times when I would do things that had conservatives really mad at me, and then liberals really mad at me the next day.
Lee
This is Bill Haslam, former two-term governor of Tennessee. We met at an event last year in Florida, then had coffee together a few times back in Nashville. We disagree about some significant things and we also agree about some significant things.
What I so much liked about those conversations was this: the honorable Bill Haslam appeared never threatened by competing ideas. There was, instead, a sort of honest curiosity, an honest quest to understand ideas he did not, at first glance, believe to be true.
Bill
Always remember, the other fella might be right.
Lee
In this episode of Tokens, in our experiment around doing public theology, Bill Haslam advocates an almost jarring key to the kingdom of doing public service. Our interview in just a moment.
Bill Haslam, a businessman and politician, served as the 49th governor of Tennessee from 2011 to 2019, was previously the mayor of Knoxville, Tennessee, born in Knoxville, graduated from Emory university in Atlanta, Georgia, subsequently began his career in business joining his father, Jim Haslam, who was the founder of the Pilot corporation. Haslam worked with the Pilot corporation for almost 20 years, becoming the president, then became CEO of the eCommerce and cataloguing division of Saks fifth Avenue, was subsequently elected mayor of Knoxville, Tennessee, and the governor of the great state of Tennessee.
Welcome Bill Haslam.
Bill
It is good to be with you Lee, thanks!
Lee
It's good to be with you. Of course. One of the most important things on that, that I did not mention, was that he was my neighbor for a while.
Bill
That's right. Yeah. You are always, you never... whenever I came over to borrow something, you never had it though.
Lee
Yeah. Actually, that's one of the things I do regret about your term as governor is that I never got to meet you when you were governor, but I do remember, I think, it was probably the day of your inauguration, or maybe the day after, seeing you on one of your first of many bike rides that we would see you going through the neighborhood. I would always sit out on my front porch a lot and still do, and I never thought it'd be quite appropriate to holler at you to ask if you wanted a cup of coffee.
Bill
Well, I probably could have taken some water at the time, but we did actually... It's kind of funny. We lived around the corner from each other, but didn't get to know each other until the year after I left office, which is a regret for me too.
Lee
Thanks for... thanks for your time today. It's great to have you on here. I think that one of the things that's been fascinating to me about Tennessee governors, I think somewhat in contrast to the, at least, public perception of the Tennessee state legislature, is that the Tennessee governors have tended to be more moderate and have tended to be able to listen to people across the aisle from each other quite well. And that certainly seems to be the case for you. How would you... you think that's fair, that you've worked at trying to pay attention to people on the other side of issues from you?
Bill
I did. You know, my political mentor was a guy named Howard Baker, who, if you've been around Tennessee for a long time, you know that name, but Baker was actually the first Republican elected to the US Senate. We think of Tennessee as such a Republican state, but it wasn't forever. When he was elected, he was the first Republican in like, I don't know, 60 years or so. I can't remember the period, but a long time. Baker went on to become the majority leader of the United States Senate, chief of staff to Reagan, US ambassador to Japan, but he had a saying, and Baker was from a little mountain town, just North of Knoxville, called Huntsville up in Scott County. And he said, “always remember, the other fella might be right.” And it's a good lesson to learn in politics, particularly today, and maybe even, particularly for those of us who are Christian believers, is to remember the other fella might be right, because we know, given our own brokenness, we can be wrong.
Lee
You know, I came across years ago reading Woodrow Wilson, and Woodrow Wilson had many, many things about which I would strongly disagree, but one of the things I really liked about him very much was that he used... I remember reading that he said, “if somewhere deep back in the back of your mind, you don't know that you might be wrong, then you're an idiot” or something like that.
And I always thought, that's a very helpful thing to carry about with us.
Bill
That is true. I mean, again, I think particularly for, like I said, those of us who are believers, we should know of all people that we could be wrong. I mean, that's kind of fundamentally what we believe. Like, yeah, that's part of being, you know, a fallen, broken person, so we should start there. I think the other thing is, you know, the, the word pluralistic is a little overused, but it's true. We, we don't, we don't live in a country where there is a prescribed philosophy of belief. And so because of that, the challenge in the country has always been about how do you find common ground in a world where we come from a lot of different beliefs without a prescribed, here is what you're supposed to, but that... that's how the country started.
Lee
It seems ironic that we do miss the fact that the doctrine of sin actually ought to point us to a great level of humility, and instead, so often what happens, I think in the public perception of Christians who are in the public realm, is that they too often get into a place of self righteousness rather than starting in the place of acknowledging our sinfulness.
Bill
Well, I mean, bingo. If you asked me if I had a message for Christians that enter the public arena in any form, whether as a candidate, as somebody that's supporting a cause or whatever it is, you start with this idea that we can argue a lot about what the Bible says about a lot of different topics. The one thing we cannot argue with is we're called to humbleness and we're called to gentleness, and we're called to being open to reason. And if you look at those three things, humble, gentle, open to reason, those are clearly calls for us. And yet if you ask the average person out there, “tell me about what Christians in the public square like,” it would take you a long time to get to those three words.
Lee
Yeah, and it seems like that you're pointing to character traits as opposed to necessarily starting with so-called Christian values, these sort of things that should characterize us as people engaged in the public realm.
Bill
Yeah. I mean, if… again, if we're going to bring our values and beliefs into the public arena, then we should start with those things that the Bible shouts the loudest about. And again, I'll take humility and not being prideful, and you go pick your adjective, and I, you know, in terms of how many times it's in the Bible, I bet mine wins.
Lee
The second thing you said there a minute ago that I think is terribly important is that you pointed to the reality of pluralism. And, you know, one of the distinctions that gets made sometimes in the academics around this is that there's a difference to be made between an ideological pluralism and a practical pluralism. An ideological pluralism that just says, well, different people have different sets of beliefs and we should celebrate them all equally, which I don't think that really works for anybody regardless of where they're coming from. But the practical pluralism is this sort of place of where, obviously in the public realm, there are all sorts of people coming with all sorts of deep sets of convictions. And again, I think if we, as a Christian, if I come at that from the perspective of one of my first tasks is to be humble or to be winsome, as opposed to being imposing, that practical pluralism and acceptance of that can be terribly important.
Bill
Well, I think it is. You know, the word tolerance I think has gotten overused and misused. Tolerance I don't think is supposed to be anything goes and whatever you believe is just fine and can be true too. I think we are called to be open and willing to listen. And I think that's what tolerance actually means. It doesn't mean that whatever you say is true, I'm fine with it, because I don't believe that, but it does mean I'm supposed to be open to listening to understand what it is you believe.
Lee
Yeah. I think when intolerance is the norm, that tolerance is much to be preferred. I think that the, the old... the old practice of, of hospitality that Jews and Muslims and Christians all have celebrated is even preferable to tolerance, because this sort of... it describes the stuff that you're talking about, this sort of openness to listen and paying attention to folks. One of the things I'm fascinated by is the capacity for especially public figures, to engage, in very practical ways, people who have been critical of them. Tell us a little bit about your experience running for mayor of Knoxville and then the subsequent decision made in your administration in that regard.
Bill
You know, when you run for mayor, it's actually a very personal thing because it's as hands-on almost as you can be in politics. In governor, you're... it's all over the state. So some of it depends on TV advertising. [For] President, it's all about raise enough money to get on air enough, et cetera. But mayor is not that way. I mean, you're literally knocking on doors. You're at ballparks and you know, a shopping mall, wherever you can to go meet people. So it all becomes a very personal deal. If you've never run for office, it's kind of hard to describe the vulnerability of that. And so one of the things I'd tell people is give a little grace to people who are running for office. It is way harder than you think. And it's, if you, if you can flash back to being in middle school and feeling like, you know, when you were carrying your tray up to a table of kids and they were looking at you, evaluating you the whole time, that's kind of what it's like to be a candidate. You feel like you're back to, “Hmm. Okay. I'm standing up here getting evaluated. Anybody can say and do whatever they want.” So that's the first thing I'd say, it's incredibly personal, it's very vulnerable. And I had a very close election for mayor. Knox County, it takes ten to actually vote Republican. And the city - unlike Nashville, we don't have metropolitan government - the city itself has been very blue, so you kind of have this blue hole in the middle of a red donut, and very close election running against a woman named Madeline Rogero who became my successor. She won after I left in eight years, and we had a very close race that was, you know, it was pretty intense the whole way.
Lee
Hmm. Didn't she become a member of your administration?
Bill
So we ended up hiring her to run our kind of community development programs, all the programs that are... a lot of the things where federal money or state money comes in and then the state actually implements them. And she did a terrific job, and I think it laid the groundwork for her to become the next mayor.
Lee
Yeah. You know, related to that sort of appreciation of somebody's former opponent: I think the first conversation you and I ever had, as I recollect, correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember you saying something like... that you thought that some of the most important things you had done as governor of the state of Tennessee were things that Phil Bredesen had laid the groundwork for.
Bill
It truly... I mean, people think of public office like, okay, this person became the office holder on January 1st of this date, and then everything starts new, but it doesn't, and it's a lot more like a big relay race. And so, in our case, Tennessee got a lot of credit our first term for a lot of gains we made on education initiatives, but the truth is, governor Bredesen came before me, set the groundwork, put a lot of those things in place. Now our job was to carry them out and to fight through some of the pushback we had, but we wouldn't have gotten where we are to the point that we made without governor Bredesen kind of building the foundation and knocking the first door down, if you will.
Lee
Yeah. Yeah. Let me shift direction for just a moment and talk with you a bit about character development. So if you think about, say, cardinal virtues, like courage, prudence, temperance, justice, what would you say have been key moments for you in your life? Either a person or events, or struggles or difficult moments that kind of helped lay some significant groundwork for some of those major virtues?
Bill
I think I'd start when I was 16, junior in high school, and my mother, who was a very young 42 year old, you know, I went to school one day, I get a call while I'm at school, they say “you need to come home.” And she had laid down to take a nap and hadn't woken up and had a stroke and died. And so early, you learn, and I always have to watch how I say this, but bad stuff happens. And I don't mean that in a, like just get over it, bad stuff happens. But that realization that things are not as they're supposed to be here. And the whole idea that there are things that we should lament over and, and be sad about, but they are part of our existence and to not be surprised when they happen.
Lee
I'm sorry, I didn't know that about your mom passing away when you were that young. So you were 16?
Bill
Junior in high school and you know, literally was sitting in a math class and the school guidance counselor knocked on the door and said, “Hey, Bill, can you come out for a second?” and said “You need to go home.” And as I'm driving into our driveway, an ambulance is coming out without its lights on. And my mom, like I said, was 42, and ended up, we think she had a... an aortic aneurysm cause my sister developed the same thing at the same age and fortunately they caught it in time, but kind of now we think that's probably what happened to her.
Lee
Yeah. When you look back at that development just for your own sort of life, what sort of stages were there in acceptance of that for you?
Bill
You know, there are a couple of things. Initially I had actually just gotten involved in a group that ended up being very impactful in my life with Young Life, a high school ministry. I'm now... I've served on the board of it however many years later, but I had just gotten involved. And so the... some of the college age leaders are the people who kind of immediately came to my side, and I still remember the encouragement of having people literally at my side, almost from the minute it happened, but like most 16 year old boys who think they're bulletproof, you know, you kinda, life goes on, you think, okay, well that happened. But you realize later what you lost. You realize it at the moment, but you don't realize it in the fullness until later. And so you realize that when you get married, you realize that when you have children of your own, and that continues to happen. I remember at the time somebody saying, “Well, losing someone close to you, particularly a parent is like having a house burned down. You don't know how much you have lost until later.” And I kind of... I found out, huh? Okay. Well, about a year ago, we actually had our house up in the mountains burned down, and at the time, you know, “Oh wow, okay. Well, I loved that rocking chair on the back porch, and I loved all that.” But you don't know what all you lost and every... about for... still, that's been 15 months ago, Chrissy and I go, “Oh yeah. That painting that my college roommate gave me when we got married was in there.” That, you know, you remember that. And I think that's what it's like when you lose a parent, particularly young, is you don't know how much you lost until time goes on and you realize all that could have been.
Lee
Yeah. What was it like watching your father go through that?
Bill
Well, it was kind of... he, it was... to me, now, again, as a parent, I can appreciate how much it was. You have to know my dad. My dad is the world's greatest optimist. He's just one of those guys that [believed] we will get through this. So I watched him balancing the personal pain of losing his wife and you know, they, I guess they'd been married for 20 years. They got married fairly early. So I've been married for 20 years with this sense of, on the other hand, I have these three children, although we were high school and high school and college age, who I want to be an encouragement too. So it kind of... I think stressful times reflect who you are. And this one did. I mean, pain combined with this optimism of we will figure out what to do next.
Lee
What are other habits that you've developed that you can see that a sort of habit that you think “That's allowed me to do a lot of stuff that I'm grateful I've been able to do?” Do you have any sort of ready list that you point to in that regard?
Bill
Yeah. I don't have a... I probably should have a ready list. It's a good suggestion. I think the next one I'd say, I mean, I can think of a whole lot of things. I actually had, when it comes... I always say when it comes to fathers, I hit the lottery because my dad was one of these folks who... giving came natural to him. Serving came natural. And I think in a lot of... I'm kinda one of those things on parenting that... a lot of things are more caught than taught. And so I just saw my father be somebody that, like I said, giving and serving and all that came easy to him. So when I became a believer, it was like, oh, okay. I've seen how that works. I get the concept. Some other things that I would throw in there, very early, like after when we were... when Chrissy and I were newly married, I started meeting every Friday morning with four other guys, literally at 6:30 every morning for 20 plus years. They pulled up in my driveway at, like I said, at 6:30 in the morning, and then we shared... literally shared everything. I mean, from checkbooks to children's struggles to work questions to “I'm thinking about switching jobs,” you name it. Everything was kind of open territory.
Lee
And how often would y'all meet?
Bill
We met every week from 6:30 to 8:00 for 20 plus... really met from, let's see, the time I was 25 until I left to come to Nashville to be a governor. And you cover a lot of life in that, in that one of the five of us got cancer and died. So it just, you go through a lot of life together. But those are the people who asked me the hard questions. So when I first started thinking about running for mayor, they were some of the first people I came to. And while they were encouraging, they also said, “Here's what we worry about for you if you do that.” And if you said you should go back and tell a 22 year old, here's what you should build into your life, I'd say community and accountability in a very close circle.
Lee
Yeah. Yeah. It seems like that sort of accountability and vulnerability without... without a sort of sense of shame around it could be just immensely... and for me too, has been immensely liberating.
Bill
Yeah. I don't want to think of what my life would look like without those guys. I think the other thing is I've tried to learn, no matter what my circumstance, whether I'm being mayor or governor, or business, doing things I'm doing now, to have a circle of people around me that involves give and take. And in that, I just have always found that whatever I'm working on, the answers better on the end if there's people involved with me to give and take. So for instance, when I was governor, we started every morning, literally with our top staff, people around the table in the governor's conference room talking about either the issue of the day or our big longterm priorities. And always the answer I walked out of there with was better than the one I walked in there with.
Lee
Why do you think some people feel so threatened by that possibility?
Bill
You know, we can all think of some people who could use more of that. I think part of it is this idea that I have to be right. And I think one of the best things for a leader is to start, like I said, not just with this idea that the other fella might be right, but with the idea that my idea might not be the best idea, and even if it is the best idea, it can be better. And I think that comes from… I've realized also that there's just certain things I'm not good at that I thought that I was and it took me getting older to realize that I wasn't good at them. That's one of the things I've learned is I have people that are... they think in different ways than I do. And that's helpful.
Lee
What would be some examples of maybe some habits that you had that took you too long to let go of or have frustrated you or maybe maybe still frustrate you?
Bill
I still... one of my - I don't know if it's a habit; it's a character issue - is I always think whatever the problem is, I want to be a part of helping fix it. And there's some good in that, right? There's like, okay, somebody needs to do that. But there's also a sense like now with the current challenge we're facing with COVID-19. You know, I've got a whole lot of ideas that I'd love to... I'd love to be shared with somebody. And I use that almost too, you know, as a, as an exaggerated point that I still am too much of a, you know, for this problem to get solved, not that I need to solve it, but I need to be in the middle of it. And I've learned there's some times when, you know, God calls you to be a part of that story, and other times when he doesn't.
Lee
That does raise another question that I wanted to ask you about, and that is: how does one deal, both when you're in the middle, for example, of being governor, and then after you're governor, how do you deal with the temptation of an inflated ego or simple vanity?
Bill
Well, it's a huge challenge because here's the reality of being an office: you really only get two kinds of feedback. You get, “Oh man, you're the governor,” and every time you walk in a room, everybody stands up and applauds, and you tell a joke and people laugh, you know, you show up in a small town and the whole small town comes out to greet you. So you know, everywhere you go, you're driven by troopers, and you live in a big residence behind a gate. I mean, it's pretty easy to quickly think you're something special. So you either get treated like, “Oh wow, you're the governor,” or the other end is the comments you see on Facebook. And so there's no good, thoughtful, edifying feedback that happens. And so the problem is you tend to just, “Okay, I'm gonna turn off the comment section on Facebook.” But that just leaves you with hearing all the other stuff. It's an issue. I guess I'd bring it back around. The good or bad part is there are a lot of things that bring you back to life, and some of those are, when you have... you also get to fail publicly in these jobs. You know, when something doesn't work out, you hire the wrong person, somebody drops a ball, it's on the front page of the newspaper and on the 6:00 news, that can be a little humbling. There's also personal moments. One favorite one of mine is I was getting on a Southwest flight headed for the west coast when I was in office, and you know how Southwest boards and everybody gets a number, but somehow when you're governor, your number is always one. And so you always get to get on the airplane first and you get on the airplane first. And of course it's all open. You go pick a seat. And so I went and got a... picked a seat on the exit aisle, so I have a little bit more room. Whole plane. The next woman coming on gets on and sits right next to me. I mean, literally next to me, I'm like, “There's a whole plane.” And she immediately goes, “I can't believe I get to sit next to the governor.” And I go, uh huh. And she goes, “for four hours,” and I go, uh huh. So then she proceeds to, like... we take selfies, we call her husband. You know, we FaceTime with her office. It's like, oh, I just can't believe we haven't... The plane's still filling up. You know what I'm thinking? I've got a long flight ahead. So then this being Nashville, I hear everybody's phones that click, click, click, that people's phones sound when they're taking pictures. And I look up and down the aisle are walking the four lead singers from Little Big Town, the country music group, and everybody's like… the buzz goes over the whole plane. And the woman sitting next to me goes, “Well, now I don't feel like I got such a good seat after all,” so you realize after a while, like, yeah, you're not that big a deal.
Lee
Yeah. It's all relative, isn't it? It's all relative. Yes. Do you have... how... in addition to what you mentioned earlier about maybe one of the things you would tell somebody who's 22 or 25 is to have people that you are in relationship with, if you could put up a billboard around that... it would show up in every county in the state right now, and it would just say something, and nobody knows it comes from you. What might it say right now?
Bill
I think if you said you can put up one and it's going to be up there for 20 years, what are you going to put? I'd put “For God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
Lee
You are listening to Tokens, public theology, human flourishing, the good life. This is our interview with the honorable Bill Haslam, 49th governor of the great state of Tennessee. We are grateful, grateful to have you joining us. Please leave us one of those five star gushing reviews on Apple podcasts, and then please subscribe wherever you listen. You can find out more about the show, a transcript of this episode, find our extensive YouTube channel and get in touch with us all at tokensshow.com/podcast. Part two in just a moment.
You're listening to Tokens. When we left off, I had just asked the honorable Bill Haslam what he might want to put on a billboard in every county in the state of Tennessee, assuming no one knew he was responsible.
Bill
I'd put, “For God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
Lee
Now, when you went to college, you wanted to be, what, a history teacher or maybe a minister, is that right?
Bill
Well, my plan was to go to college, teach history for two or three years, and then go to seminary. Majored in history at Emory. Thought... kind of even went and visited a lot of seminaries my first year or two out of college. But my plan actually got changed a couple of times. My dad came to me and said, “Listen, if you really think about being in ministry, you already know what the high school world looks like. That's not going to bring you any new experience. Why don't you come in business? It'll give you a different perspective and help you [know] if that's what you want to do.” And so I said okay and came thinking I would be there for two years and ended up staying twenty plus. And I think the thing that changed is I got there and started... got really involved in our church and I walked away with a... great appreciation for what the church does, but thinking I'm not certain that that's what I'm supposed to do. And so I literally kind of kept putting off the decision, for a year at a time, knowing that where I was was not what I was called to do for the rest of my life, but becoming increasingly certain that being a pastor was not.
Lee
Do you feel like... that those, whatever those things were that were driving you towards pastoral care or proclamation, have you had outlets for that part of yourself?
Bill
Yeah, it's kind of interesting in the interesting way that God sometimes does things. So when I ran for mayor and when I ran for governor, I thought, I'm going to be like the CEO of the city or the CEO of the state. But what I found was the jobs were a lot more like being senior pastor of the city or of the state in the sense of relationships matter. No matter what you're doing, we can put all the education programs in place in the world we want for schools, but it doesn't change the fact that a lot of society problems walk in the front door of that school every morning with most of those kids. And I think the other analogy I always make is that... the reality that governments you've been involved with, with church is... is a lot like a church in the sense that people are always saying, “Why aren't you fill-in-the-blank? Why aren't you spending more? Why aren't you paying teachers more? Why aren't you spending more on our disabled citizens? Why aren't you building more sidewalks?” If it's a church it's, “Why aren't we spending more on the middle school program? Or why are we not doing more for overseas missions?” Or whatever it is. You can fill in those blanks and it's a challenge of competing, but valid constituencies. But at the end of the day, there's a, there's a limit, right? There's a finite amount of resources, and so you're having to make those choices between valid real needs, but needs that you can't meet all of them. And in the end, I think when I've talked to my friends who are pastors, sometimes that's what feels the most similar about their job to my job. That and everybody has an opinion about you.
Lee
So you know, that raises the question of dealing with criticism. What were ways that you have learned to process criticism, and/or not to let it get you to a point of despair?
Bill
I'll start with the full disclosure. I've gotten better, but not great. I mean, after a while, your skin gets tough just because you've been shot at enough times, it's like, okay, well that didn't hurt as much as I thought it would hurt. When you're in a campaign and the first time somebody runs a negative ad and you're sitting there watching the nightly news, and it's like... Crissy, literally one night we were getting ready to go to bed, and we were in Knoxville. So then the nightly news came on at 11:00 and I'm brushing my teeth. And she watches the ad and goes, “Well, I'm not so certain I want to sleep in the same house with you anymore.” Kidding. And then she runs, she promptly rolls over and goes right to sleep. And I'm staring at the ceiling for about three hours. Like, how can they say that? I think two or three things. Number one, I think, the pastor of our church in Knoxville used to... I asked him that question. He said, “I always remind myself that no matter what they think about me, they don't know the half of it, that I'm way worse than you think I am.”
And so...
Lee
Oh man, that's pretty great. That's a beautiful bit of wisdom.
Bill
I mean, that's part of it. I do remind myself, like you don't know the half of it. I think some of it also is the sense of... I... it's kind of, it's part of the calling when you're a public person. Again, I'd compare it to a pastor or... the pastor, every week somebody walks out of the church and goes, “I can't believe he said that,” you know, “he's wrong.” And they go back to lunch, you know, criticizing whatever that was. So it's just part of the nature of having a public role. It's the same thing if you're the football coach for the Titans or whoever it is. I mean, it's just you, you do your job in public. So that's, that's part of what we - if you feel called to that - that's part of what comes with it. And then I think the third thing is, again, I'm not great at this, but I had to remind myself that this is part of the process of formation that God's decided to use for me. That, you know, we talk about it, until Christ is formed in you, and that criticism is part of how God has decided that that's what I need to do to form you into who I want you to be.
Lee
Thank you for that. I'm fascinated that one of your vetoes as governor was to veto the bill from the Tennessee state legislature that wanted to make the Bible the Tennessee state book, and the Tennessee state legislature has done that, they've tried that I think, several times. So tell us your thinking about vetoing that bill.
Bill
Yeah. It is a little different experience when you come home from work and your spouse says, “So how was work” and I say “ It was a bad day. I've vetoed the Bible.” And you know, believe me, I heard a lot about it various places, but here's... to me, the constitution is clear about you're going to make no rule establishing a religion, or the other is... or preventing it. Okay. Or preventing the free exercise of it. But this felt like, if we're going to say it's the official book of the state, that that's establishing a religion, in violation of the constitution. So the people writing the bill says, “Look well, no, we're not saying the state book is God's word. We're going to say it's the state book because of the history and the education it provides and what it's meant to our citizens.” And I said, “Well then you're kind of putting the Bible along with our, you know, our state insect and our state song and our state tree and our state, you know, whatever. And I said in that case, you're diminishing the word of God, and so you're doing one or the other, either establishing as a religion or you're diminishing it as the word of God. In either case, I don't think it's the right thing to do. So that was, I think, only the second veto that we had, and two of the vetoes I had were actually with things that, you know, I care passionately about. But to me, that was actually a fairly clear one that... we were either violating the constitution or we were minimizing the word of God, neither one of which I wanted to do.
Lee
It did seem like a bizarre sort of effort in my mind as well. You did not veto a bill that was protecting the rights, as I recollect how it worked, it was protecting the rights of teachers to question the theory of evolution, which obviously has a very long history, going back to the 1925 Scopes trial in Tennessee, but what was your thinking there?
Bill
I have to remember that was actually either my first or second year, so I don't remember exactly. I think what we did... you have a choice in Tennessee. All States are different. You can either sign a bill, you can veto it... in most States, it takes two thirds of the legislature to override the governor's veto. Tennessee, it only takes a simple majority, so if the same people vote for it the second time it's voted for the first time, then they can overturn your veto. It's very simple to do. Or your third alternative is just not to sign the bill to say, “I don't really agree with this, but for a variety of reasons, I'm going to let it happen.” In this case, as I remember, there was a pretty overwhelming number of people who had voted in favor of it, but even with that, I wasn't certain that... it didn't feel like it was in the end of the day, going to do harm when it felt like it was more of a statement than it was anything that was going to cause damage. But I don't remember the exact particulars, to be honest with you.
Lee
Another one, perhaps certainly related to theology, but also perhaps would have been counter-intuitive for some Republicans was that you vetoed a bill that sought to end Vanderbilt's all-comers policy. And for those who are listening who may not remember this, and you correct me if my recollection is incorrect, but Vanderbilt had set up a policy in which they did not want any sort of religious groups on campus having any sort of criterion of discrimination about who could be allowed as a part of their group. And many, many of those groups felt like this would in effect diminish their sorts of convictions or diminish their moral stances and so forth. And so, many, many of the people on the right or among the religious groups wanted to end that policy at Vanderbilt and the state legislature sought to do that. And then you vetoed that particular bill. So what was your thinking there?
Bill
So this is one of those with lots of complexities to it. So you described Vanderbilt's position, not just Vanderbilt, but a lot of schools have gone to an all-comers policy. And what they basically said is you couldn't have any kind of qualifier at all. So the college Republicans couldn't say that you had to be a Republican to join the college Republicans, you know, think of whatever the case is. And that included, you couldn't have any creedal statements at all in your qualifiers for not just who could join, but who could be an officer. And… I actually disagree with the policy. I think the policy is wrong and it just doesn't, I mean, on the very face of it say, okay, I can be, I can be a tea party Republican, but if I want to join the the college Democrats and even run for office, and I want to bring enough of my friends that night of the vote, I can get elected to the slate of officers.” I just... I don't think the policy is the right one, but what the legislature tried to do, I thought it was wrong…. Vanderbilt's a private university, so the state legislature doesn't have any control over it, but what they said is... they could put that policy in place for the state schools... for the private institutions like Vanderbilt, what they said was, “If you receive over,” I can't remember the amount of money, like, “$20 million from the state, you can't put the policy in place.” Well, Vanderbilt at the time, it's university and medical center were combined and so Vanderbilt got that much money in Medicaid funds. And so they could say that thus we're going to penalize you in that way. So... I had two problems. One, the fact that we were going to target Medicaid funds for what we were going to cut off because they did this... didn't feel like the right association. But even second and more fundamentally, and you can appreciate this being a Lipscomb employee, do we really want the state telling private institutions what they can do, and what policies they can put in place? Because there's the point I made, if we do that to Vanderbilt now, well at some point in time somebody will come to a conservative institution and tell them what they can and can't do policy-wise. And so I just felt like this was one of those cases where you had a private university. I didn't agree with the policy, but for the state to jump in there on that felt like a really bad precedent.
Lee
Let's shift to talking about criminal justice a bit. Being out of office now you look back, what are the things… that you are glad were accomplished and what are things that you think were left undone, need attention?
Bill
Yeah. I'll say... let me start with... I'm going to go in reverse order. I actually think we put too many people in prison for too long, if you want a fundamental statement after having looked at the whole system, but changing that is a lot harder than you think it is. And we've tried to do a couple of sentencing reform efforts. The problem you have is there's lots of different interests. If you're a district attorney, you don't want some of that discretion taken out of your hand. You want to be able to use your judgment to apply to these cases, and other people feel that way as well. So changing that is really hard, but I became convinced that particularly with the length of sentences, except in some extraordinary circumstances, we're putting people in prison for too long and it's not really helping society and it's costing us a lot of money.
Lee
It does seem to me that this seems to be an area where fiscal conservatives and social progressives could find a huge amount of common ground on, because it seems to be problematic in so many, many ways. And fruitful areas of reform that could make a lot of difference.
Bill
Interesting. I mean, to your point, people like the Koch brothers who are known for advocating a lot of very conservative policies, and the ACLU who's known for not, have agreed on this, and have even teamed up on a couple of efforts.
So I do think that's true, and I actually think it will happen, but it takes prolonged effort and it takes people who dig in enough to really understand the impact now. This is... government's hard when it has to do surgery. It's easy when it's a sledgehammer. Okay? This is not one that you can take a sledgehammer to. It is going to be one you'll have to take a surgical approach, but it's overdue and it's needed.
Lee
I wondered... the surgical approach, you know, that certainly makes sense. And yet at the same time, there are a lot of people who are in prison and seem to be in prison for a very, very long time. That seems unjust, that they certainly feel that the perceived need and some people around them have a perceived need that we do need a sledgehammer to some of this.
Bill
There's a lot that needs to change, but I don't... politically, and realistically you're not going to be able to just to go in and say, okay, all those sentences that were, you know, 30 years, we're going to make 10 years. I mean, I'm going off hand, obviously. I don't think you're going to be able to politically get that done. So you're going to have to go in with an approach that looks not at individual by individual, but says, how can we thoughtfully come up with a program that works a lot better than what we do now. So the need is real. Like you said, if I'm in there or my relative's in there, and I'm thinking, this is crazy, you know, their service should have been over a long time ago. I feel the immediacy, so I'm just saying, I don't think it's one of those where we can say we're going to go reduce all sentences by 50%. That's what I meant by sledgehammer. Surgical doesn't mean it doesn't need to happen right now.
Lee
Yeah, yeah. Fair enough. How do you think about the difference between what someone can see ideally should happen and should happen now, versus pragmatic realities that you have to... within which you have to work? How does, how does that operate for you?
Bill
Yeah that's a great question. Really good question. And so at the end of the day, like I said, we live in a pluralistic society. Back to what I talked about earlier, you have to realize that to… you know, as governor, you have a lot of power. End of the the day though, to change the law, you need… you know, we have 99 House members and 33 senators. And so you got to get 50 of the House and 17 of the Senate to pass anything. And so there is that practical reality of doing that.
Now the governor does have some power in terms of pardons and clemencies that he or she can do totally on their own, but to change the law, which is what you inevitably do, so you're not dealing with a one-by-one case, it means you're going to have to politically get that done. And that's a harder and longer process, and so that's where the practical piece comes in.
Lee
Yeah. I think one of the areas as well that has concerned me so much in paying attention to the years in Tennessee and throughout the whole United States is the death penalty. It seems to be riddled with so many systemic problems, and so many individual cases seem to be riddled with deep, deep problems. But what's your... what's been your process in processing that and acting in that regard?
Bill
So, really, I mean, if you talk about the personally difficult things you deal with as governor, that's easily the most personally difficult because you realize by the time it gets to you, you're literally the only - I mean, maybe the Supreme court's going to intervene, but the chances are, like, you know, slim to none - and so it's coming down to you. And so you have to decide early, kind of what your philosophy is going to be and then look at each case individually. So both, what, what's my overall philosophy going to be, and then individually…I'm going to start at 40,000 feet. I don't think the way that the death penalty happens now is a good process, and I don't mean the actual process of execution, but how it plays out, because the process takes so long that by the time it comes up, that individual is very likely a very different person than the one who committed the crime. But it doesn't change the fact that they did the crime, you know, 30, 40, however many years ago. I just think it's ineffective and it's costly, and I don't think it serves its purpose the way it is now. I know there's a lot of people who feel like, well, it's also not just, and that there's a lot of people who are sentenced, you know, in unjust ways, and there's been a racial component to it and a lot of things that historically have been true overall... and you and I have discussed the book Just Mercy in the cases there. But in the cases that I dealt with while I was there, that wasn't what we were looking at. These were cases where it was clear the person had done it. There was no doubt about that. The question was - and all of the crimes were heinous, horrible... I mean, like a couple of them just, you know, unspeakable crimes - the question is, okay, that was 30 years ago and this person has changed a lot since then, or the person was of limited mental capacity, so where does that come into play and how do you draw that line? My basic philosophy, which I decided on early, and really after talking with governor Bredesen, my predecessor we talked about before, was I didn't think it was my job to go be the 13th juror and to go say that they got the facts wrong. Because the case had been - by the time it got to me - it had been heard or tried probably, you know, in multiple courts, multiple times on the state and the federal level. [My job] was to see did misjustice happen somewhere? Did they not get adequate legal coverage? Have we learned something since then through the DNA? Have we learned something since then about the circumstances? And then, having decided that, I wouldn't be the 13th juror, and also, I didn't think it was my role to say, “Here's what I personally feel about the death penalty as opposed to what the state law is, so I'm going to put my, at this point in time, put my personal feelings in on this case.”
Lee
When you look back at other things related to criminal justice, are there other kinds of things that you look back and you're grateful that happened or that you were able to do?
Bill
The big challenge obviously with criminal justice is to make it about reform and rehabilitation. And that's... it's a lot harder to do than you'd like. So we kept working on getting the recidivism, right. You know, the rate at which people return to prison. And we set that up as a key marker. Like that's one of the ways we're going to judge our success, but of course that still happens over time. And we started judging, you know, what are we doing on educational attainment for people, for folks who are incarcerated? And we started measuring and talking about that. So I would say we made some progress. It's, again, if you asked me if I'm going back and you're going to do another eight years, what is one of the things you would focus on that you didn't get as much done as you'd like it? Criminal justice would be in the top three or four areas for me.
Lee
It seems to me that one of the things that Christian theology ought to be able to contribute is what I like to call a sort of non-ideological ad hoc approach to all social issues. And it relates to some of the stuff that you said at the very beginning… it's that if we start with a strong doctrine of sin and acknowledging our own brokenness individually and the brokenness of systems, that should lend itself towards being pretty suspicious of deep ideological commitments. And so, you know, this is probably bad exegesis, but I like to use the example of, you know, if you've got the story of Joseph at the end of the book of Genesis, you know, Joseph's saving of the Hebrew people is a classic example of centralized big government, big taxation. You know, he taxes everybody a seventh of everything, and they bring it in for seven years. And he's lauded and celebrated as the one who has been ordained by God for such a time as this to save God's people. And so, in my mind, people that are ideologically and always committed against any sort of centralized, bureaucratic solution have a problem with the end of the book of Genesis. And yet, then when you read the beginning of the book of Exodus, that same centralized bureaucracy, within a generation, has become the mechanism to enslave people. And so people who are ideologically committed to the goods of big government have a serious problem with the beginning of the book of Exodus.
And so I like to say, it seems to me that one of the things we could do is rather than being ideologically committed Republicans or ideologically committed Democrats is to say - and again, I'm not a career politician, so I don't know why you've got those pragmatic realities, I'm sure you have process - but as far as approaching things, it seems to me it'd be more helpful if we commit ourselves to being ad hoc in our approach to given social issues, and then it seems like we could contribute a lot more than getting caught up in partisanship. But how do you respond to that and think to that?
Bill
Well, I think that's... I think your premise is a good one. Then I'd start this way. Those folks who think that Christians should be in one party or the other, I couldn't disagree with more. I don't... it's hard for me to say, “Here's a biblical framework for your political partisanship.” The Bible is really liberal on some things and really conservative on other things. I mean, as a pastor, I know you say, you know, the Bible tells us to be really liberal with our money and really conservative with our bodies, but I can keep going with things…. To be honest with you, in office, there were times when I would do things that had conservatives really mad at me, and then liberals really mad at me the next day. And I hoped that was because I was being faithful to where God was leading on that area. And like I said, I want to be really clear. I'm really capable of missing… I don't want to say every decision I made was where God was leading, but there are things that, what I proposed, expanding who we covered with Medicaid in Tennessee, part of the Obamacare deal, and to this day, I still get a lot from Republicans about that. And… but I honestly felt like that was something we could do practically and it was about taking care of the least of these and it was the right thing to do. I also had lots of, you know, folks on the left side of the spectrum that, when a bill came up that basically let counselors say, “I'm not the right person. Let me refer you to someone else,” people saw that as well, I think you're just setting it up a chance for people to discriminate against LGBT folks. That really wasn't my... I didn't write the bill, but that wasn't the reason I signed it. I just thought counselors ought to be able to say, “You know, Lee, I'm not the right person to help you with that, but I will get you somebody that is.” I just felt like that [was right.] But that… scared a lot of folks on the left side of the spectrum. So I think your premise is right. I haven't thought about the ad hoc version of that…. I think we err when we allow ourselves to say, “Because I'm a Christian, I vote this way every time.”
Lee
Bill Haslam, 49th governor of the state of Tennessee. Thank you for your time. Been great to be with you.
Bill
Well it is the 49th, but as they say in Australia, a rooster today, feather duster tomorrow.
Lee
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