In Jefferson’s time, such opposition to government per se—such fierce frontier individualism—might have made Stevenson a real democrat; in the more complicated mid-twentieth century, his reluctance to make use of the powers of his office allowed the continuation of the vacuum in Texas government in which special interest groups—the Texas oilmen, natural gas and sulphur companies, Brown & Root and their subordinate contractors—who had no such reluctance to interfere in government had long exerted undue influence in the legislature.
