RALEIGH – Gov. Beverly Perdue gave a year-end round of interviews to North Carolina media organizations, including Carolina Journal. While answering a number of specific questions, Perdue also had some general themes prepared – including the same one she started the year with, the comparison of her gubernatorial term with that of Depression-era Gov. Max Gardner.
I suppose it must be comforting to return to the Gardner theme. Perdue remains one of the nation’s most unpopular governors, and has certainly gotten off to a rockier start than any of her predecessors did. I’m sure she’d like to think that the damage is only temporary, that North Carolinians will come to appreciate her as a change agent during a time of severe recession and governmental scandal.
We’re all tempted by wishful thinking when times are tough. Perdue and her aides ought to resist the urge. Their first year in office was awfully rough. They didn’t dig the fiscal and ethical holes left by Mike Easley. But they failed to negotiate them effectively. Early on, Perdue seem to signal that she’d be against any significant tax increases in the midst of recession. Later, she signed one of the largest tax increases in North Carolina history, and continues to sing the praises of federal borrowing as a solution to the state’s problems.
As for ethics, Perdue began the year with admirable openness but ended it by naming Senate Majority Leader Tony Rand to head the state’s parole commission just as he was being accused of insider trading. I’m not prejudging the case, as previously explained, but certainly it was the kind of issue that the Perdue administration should have vetted ahead of time.
The political class remains fixated on the notion that North Carolina’s fiscal problems stem from undertaxation, and would love to see Perdue champion “tax reform” in 2010. That would be disastrous, as I’m sure her political advisors have counseled. The state does need tax reform, to be sure, but such reform should be embedded within a net tax cut. It would act as the proverbial spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. Without it, any new tax bill will make voters choke.
So what could Perdue do to turn things around? Here’s what I think would help.
First, do whatever it takes to assemble a talented senior staff. Perdue made several mistakes, ranging from minor communication miscues to very public swipes at State School Superintendent June Atkinson and State Treasurer Janet Cowell, that should have been headed off at the staff level. The governor’s handling of the get-out-of-jail-free dispute in the state prisons is another example – Perdue may have the makings of a legitimate legal argument hidden somewhere in all the fulminating and gesticulating, but it’s too hard to find it.
Second, champion truly innovative solutions to the state’s lingering fiscal problems, such as public-private partnerships and the selling off of low-performing state assets to private firms. But, again, get someone to work out the legalities in detail beforehand. The financing dispute about the completion of I-485 around Charlotte was another unnecessary distraction.
Finally, as I have already argued, I think Perdue should try a little triangulation. She’s been critical of the ObamaCare provision that requires a costly expansion of North Carolina’s Medicaid enrollment, but her criticism hasn’t been forceful enough. Now is the time to pick that fight.
The governor’s defenders are certainly right about one thing: it’s a long way to 2012. Just as we’ve never had such an unpopular governor, we also don’t have experience with governors make political comebacks. Perhaps Perdue will blaze that new trail, too.
Wishful thinking won’t do it, however. Tough decisions are necessary. In that, the Max Gardner comparison is apt.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation