The governor dropped by the office recently as he does from time to time. It's always good to see Bob Riley. He's smart, open, intellectually honest and has a sense of humor, even about politics.

This time when I saw the caravan of black SUVs turning into the office just ahead of me, I thought, "Uh oh, there goes my parking place." Happily, the security team didn't steal my place — as it did last time, in the rain.

The governor kidded me about coming to work late and I gigged him about being a reformed parking-spot thief, then we settled into the conference room for conversation.

It was a good day for him. He had ridden a bulldozer to symbolize the beginning of the end of the long, long, long-delayed construction of a parkway that will link Interstate 20 with McClellan — vital to development of the former army base.

We — the paper, I personally and two governors — have had development of McClellan at the top of the agenda for northeast Alabama for years, and so his launching of the stimulus-supported parkway construction made it a fine day.

In our rolling discussion that included reporters and the editorial board, another crucial development issue was raised: the Army left a water and sewage system that would support maybe one big industry, and that's all.

Local business, industrial and financial leaders charged with developing the former fort — stretched to the limit by petty, uninformed legal obstructions — worry how they can come up with $50 million to build the necessary water treatment plant for additional industries.

Unlike many political leaders, Riley without hesitation said, in effect, you get the industry and we'll build the treatment plant. His advice is to concentrate on landing appropriate industries and leave infrastructure to government.

I thought but neglected to say, "We accept your pledge as a marker that can be cashed by your successor who I think is most likely to be your choice, Bradley Byrne, who as chancellor of the two-year college system had a reformist agenda."

This unarticulated thought led to a brief political discussion. He made a case for a Republican majority in the state Legislature as a barrier to prevent teachers' union executive secretary Paul Hubbert from blocking progressive educational reforms.

It is true that the initiative for such progressive policies as distance learning and the reading initiative did not spring from the brow of Hubbert and wasn't cooked up by task forces commissioned by the Alabama Education Association.

But the education lobby did not fight tooth and nail against progressive ideas, and union members are using those ideas in the classroom.

The question is: Which face of the Republican Party would we see in Montgomery, or more importantly, in Washington? If they all looked and thought like Bob Riley, they would look good and do creative things for state and country.

But there are two faces of the Republican Party. There are conservative statesmen and then there are radical cuckoos.

In the pyramid of contemporary Republican statesmanship, at the top would be Colin Powell, who would have been president if he had run. Others would include: Sens. John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Lamar Alexander and Olympia Snowe, to name a few.

There may be a new convert to GOP statecraft, Newt Gingrich. When the nation's least popular retired politician, Dick Cheney, said Powell was no longer a Republican after endorsing President Obama, Gingrich came to Powell's defense.

"I don't want to pick a fight with Dick Cheney, but the fact is, the Republican Party has to be a broad party that appeals across the country," adding, "To be a national party, you have to have a big-enough tent that you inevitably have fights inside the tent."

Gingrich seems to have escaped from the sanatorium of the cuckoos, where South Carolina, happily for us, is ahead of Alabama.

That Appalachian explorer, Gov. Mark Sanford, looked at a state budget drowning in deficits caused by the Great Recession his party created and spoke firmly to the president, "Don't you dare throw us any life ring marked 'stimulus.'"

The state's freshman U.S. senator, Jim DeMint, is Sanford's ideological twin. To the problem of rising health-care costs and millions without insurance, he answered, kill Obama's bill, "it will break him."

Because the radical right wing of the party is strongest in the South, I can imagine a Legislature where, no matter the quality of the issue, the doors would swing open like clockwork to a chorus of, "cuckoo; cuckoo."

An internal war is now raging for the mind of the party. I don't know how the new face of Republicanism will look, but I clearly favor that of a statesman.

Changing the face of the party could mean changing its heart as well. Bob Riley could be a harbinger of a Southern Republican Party that is courageous, compassionate and inclusive.

He is more the spiritual heir of former Virginia Gov. Linwood Holton than of Mark Sanford. Holton, in his inaugural address, said, "At the dawn of the 1970s, it is clear that problem-solving, and not philosophical principles, has become the focal point of politics … old clichés have now blurred and old dogmas have died."

However the future unfolds, we will always be glad to see Bob Riley, as I told him when he was leaving. "You remind us of our (few) political victories, we endorsed you, and you won in spite of that." He left laughing.

Brandt Ayers is publisher of The Anniston Star.