“Why should I retire?” Houston Chronicle columnist Cragg Hines asks. “Because I can!”
Hines was the Houston Chronicle’s first full-time Washington columnist, and, when he clocks out today for the very last time, it may turn out that he’s its last: The Chronicle has not yet determined whether to directly replace Hines.
“Hmm, ‘first and the last’: That has a certain cachet to it, doesn’t it?” Hines tells Yeas & Nays.
| Cragg Hines |
Of course, it’s no easy task to fill Hines’ shoes. During his 35 years with the paper, Hines earned a reputation as a graceful stylist with a distinctive voice. Colleagues joked that he saved his most original thinking for his globetrotting expense reports.
A mainstay in the exclusive Gridiron Club, Hines was well-known for his clever musical skits and his rich baritone voice.
He retires today to a more relaxing life of book writing. The decision to step down came to him while vacationing in Paris.
“I was having lunch in Paris with friends — all Americans, all younger and all retired — and I said, ‘What’s wrong with this picture?’ ”
He probably won’t miss some of the reader feedback he gets. “They can’t believe that this center-left writer — which in Texas means you’re virtually pink — is actually writing,” he says. “The word ‘disgrace’ is used by my less admiring readers. … The Bush hard-core is ready at the e-mails.”
But he will miss, most of all, his colleagues at the White House, “almost all of whom I adore … from Bob Novak to Maureen Dowd.”
“When I first started, [former Washington Post columnist] Mary McGrory told me, ‘You’re going to learn to hate this,’ ” Hines recalls. “But I never did. … I could have kept doing this, no question about it. But there are other things. I love it, but life goes on.”
