RALEIGH – Tuesday’s night gubernatorial debate at WRAL-TV gave Democrat Beverly Perdue a valuable chance to recover from weak performances in two previous debates against Republican Pat McCrory. Perdue did show some improvement. She didn’t seem as overprepared as last time, and her answers came more naturally. She didn’t try to force prepared soundbites where they didn’t fit, and didn’t seem to get as rattled. There was even some welcome bits of humor, such as when she criticized a Republican Governors Association ad for casting an actress to play her who lacked a suitable hairstyle.
But, let’s face it, face-to-face debates are just not Perdue’s friend.
I still find this turn of events surprising, given her long tenure in the North Carolina General Assembly. Anyone who has watched her run legislative committees or preside over the state senate knows that she is fully capable of expressing herself effectively and asserting herself commandingly. But put her in a TV studio with Pat McCrory, and the best the Perdue camp seems to be able to hope for is that the hour will pass quickly without too many mishaps.
There were mishaps. Moderators David Crabtree and Pam Salsby weren’t willing just to ask questions and sit back. They probed and challenged. Asked whether the two candidates would be out campaigning with their national tickets, McCrory gave McCain/Palin a big rhetorical hug while Perdue seemed to edge away from Obama. That didn’t look good. She also lapsed into the old braggadocio here and there, saying things like “my work on the military has been fabulous.”
But during this debate, which aired live on some TV and radio stations around the state and will be replayed on others, Perdue’s most-significant problems weren’t about performance or preparation. They were strategic. In a year when North Carolina voters are disaffected about the economy and dissatisfied with outgoing Gov. Mike Easley, Perdue should be putting major distance between herself and an unpopular administration in Raleigh. She should be calling for a new direction. Instead, she responded to an early question about the economy by inviting voters to judge her on her “record over the past four years.”
When asked where she differed with the governor, Perdue did promise she would be a more “hands-on” leader (good, though probably difficult not to accomplish) and said she opposed his mental-health reforms. But that just invited the logical follow-up: Why didn’t you object to the reforms at the time of their passage? Perdue emphasized that she is elected separately from the governor and doesn’t answer to him, which is true but a bit unresponsive. I know it would be hard for her to whack Easley – particularly given certain common staffers – but it would have worked better.
As for McCrory, I thought he overplayed his critique of a Perdue ad calling him a “real danger to the middle class.” It was effective to question whether this accusation was fair or reasonable. But he did it repeatedly, which had the effect of, well, repeating the charge that he was a “real danger to the middle class.”
During the two biggest moments in the debate, however, I’ll have to say that McCrory got the better of Perdue. The first came on offshore drilling. Rather than continue to play word games, Perdue should have just come out and said that, having reconsidered the issue in light of energy prices and new information, she had changed her view. That’s what John McCain did, and he’s pretty much gotten away with it. Instead, she restated her convoluted position (for, against, yes, maybe, whatever). Pressed by McCrory directly, she then essentially confirmed a switch in position, but attributed it to changes in drilling technology. That gave McCrory the opening to point out that she had stated 100 percent opposition to offshore drilling just a few weeks ago, so technological innovation couldn’t explain the flip-flop.
Frankly, it was a mess. You could tell Perdue was glad to see the moderators move onto something else.
The other key moment concerned Perdue’s silly charge that McCrory’s voucher plan would take $900 million away from public schools. As I’ve written before, this is an old, misleading trick from the Easley campaign playbook. McCrory has never proposed universal vouchers, which is what the Perdue charge assumes, and even then Perdue’s math makes a number of other absurd assumptions (what, not a single disgruntled parent would use the voucher to transfer her child out of a failing public school?) When McCrory stated that the charge concerned a policy he had never proposed, she didn’t have a good answer.
Bottom line: Perdue’s performance in the WRAL debate showed improvement. It also showed why she has accepted fewer debate invitations than McCrory has.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.