RALEIGH – North Carolina is suffering, it is frequently said, from a leadership deficit. I may have said this recently, too, but now I’m starting to regret it. Unfortunately, in politics the term “leadership” has come to be defined as “having the courage to raise taxes” or “risking billions of tax dollars on good intentions.” If these qualities constitute leadership, I’ll cast my vote for craven cowardice.
The state’s economic, social, and political problems are not attributable to a lack of such faux leadership. They are not the result of North Carolinians keeping and spending too much of their own money. Instead, some of our problems flow directly from too much government, or the wrong kind – marginal tax rates higher than those of neighboring states, regulations that squash the entrepreneurial spirit, billions spent on education or social service monopolies shielded from accountability rather than through the mechanisms of choice and competition.
And other problems, frankly, lie largely outside the ability of government either to cause or to ameliorate. They are intractable social ills. They are the result of poor individual choices, a lack of faith, even just nature’s fury and sheer bad luck.
True leadership in government means mastering the phrases “I don’t know” and “no.” In the first case, humility and realism dictate that public officials be more upfront about what they don’t understand, or can’t possibly understand, about complex social phenomena. And in the second case, political courage is most often needed when the prevailing currents are pulling the ship of state in the wrong direction. It takes a strong, steady, determined hand to steer against the current, and it may seem like the outcome isn’t to move in the right direction but merely to slow the ship’s momentum towards dangerous obstacles or distant, forbidding lands.
True leadership, for example, would be found in North Carolina public officials taking the opportunity presented to them by the latest Triangle Transit Authority controversy to stop short of building a wasteful rail-transit boondoggle in a region for which it is patently unsuitable. In Charlotte, true leadership would have local officials rethink the assumptions behind a $2 billion school-construction campaign over the next 10 years that will spend too much on facilities unneeded for quality education and raise property taxes by more than 20 percent.
On the coast, true leaders would view legal opposition to the construction of a new convention center in Wilmington as a chance to reset the community’s priorities towards core government responsibilities such as fighting crime and expand road capacity. In Asheville, true leaders will not see renovation needs at its Civic Center as an invitation to build a new one, but rather to invite private capital in and nudge the city as far out of the hospitality business as possible. In the Piedmont Triad, I would argue, true leadership should mean saying no to a seemingly endless parade of corporate consultants seeking incentive handouts, while recognizing that economic development is best accomplished through lower taxes, less regulation, and better basic services from cities and counties.
I don’t necessarily expect a sudden wave of true leaders to emerge in North Carolina. I’d settle for less political hackery and a serious effort to recover the proper meaning of “leadership.” None of my dictionaries lists “making speculative bets with other people’s money” as among the preferred definitions.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.