I May Be Wrong But I Doubt It - Charles Barkley [42]
The South is still such a good ol’ boy network—still is—that if you have any influence or any standing you need to stand up and be counted. I guess I could just keep my TV job, make a couple of million a year and be happy. But there’s no way God allowed me to make all this money, meet all the people I’ve met and rise to this status just to sit around, count my money and not try to help people improve their lives.
These are some of the things I talked with the Republican Black Caucus guys about. I’m not going to be a token. They talk about all these appearances they want me to make, because there are a lot of big elections coming up, particularly in Alabama, where the gubernatorial election is in November. I said I’ll meet with the candidates and see what they’re talking about.
I was asked for years about being a Republican, probably because most black people are Democrats. My mother heard it once and called me and said, “Charles, Republicans are for the rich people.” And I said, “Mom, I’m rich.” But the workings of politics are so strange that I’ve decided in recent months not to be worried about party affiliation as much as about trying to help the best candidates get things done, and that may involve being independent and keeping my options open.
I think the biggest misconception is that the Democratic Party does so much to help poor people. In a whole lot of cases the Democratic Party keeps people poor. Just about every single person in my hometown is a Democrat. And they are living exactly the same way they lived when I left there twenty years ago. Their lives have not been financially improved in any substantial way in all that time. My high school, Leeds High School, is closing. And the whole area has been vacated. Their lives are not any better.
I asked my mother and grandmother about why things never got any better under the politicians that ran things for so many years, and they kept voting for ’em. And they’d say, “We’re Democrats.” And I’d say, “Why? All these people vote this way every single election and things are still the same.” What did they do in exchange for all that loyalty for all those years? I don’t see any new economic opportunities in my hometown. You have to go to Birmingham to get a job. Part of what initially attracted me to the Republican Party is that I see—whether I’m right or wrong—what the Democratic Party has not done where I’m from.
Since then, I’ve gotten to meet and know some of the important Republican leaders. Living in Arizona, I got a chance to get to know John McCain. People act like Republicans haven’t had a full range of life experiences. I think McCain’s seen it all. The guy earned a Purple Heart, he was a prisoner of war, he relates to all kinds of people. I think he probably got slapped around a little bit in the last presidential election. A lot of people really liked him, his platform and the issues he campaigned on. But the Republican Party said, “Hey, George Bush is going to be the guy.” I bet he was probably a bit disillusioned. In fact, he was totally disillusioned after the election. Money changes a lot of things.
People ask me if politics will ever excite me like sports. The answer is no. Absolutely not, no way. There’s nothing that can excite you like sports. Athletic competition is its own rush. But after you have to stop competing in sports, there are other areas where competing can help a whole lot of people who need help, and business and