RALEIGH — This is not exactly a great time to be a state leader trying to carry out a purely state-level agenda.
The nation is at war in Iraq. Our troops have sustained light but tragic casualties. Some have apparently been executed by fascist thugs loyal to a dangerous tyrant whose own fate is unclear. American and British forces are now securing two port cities in the south, including Iraq’s second-largest city of Basra, and assembling ground and air forces within striking distance of Republican Guard divisions blocking the coalition’s path to Baghdad. The international diplomatic and economic implications of the current crisis are legion and significant. And North Carolinians, like the rest of their countrymen, are glued to televisions or radios trying to keep track of the fast-moving and complicated story.
In short, this hardly seems an opportune time for politicians to be talking about education reform, air quality, mass transit, or health insurance. These are important issues, but right now they aren’t timely ones.
I’ve heard some folks around Raleigh worry that if the war “drags on” (like, for a few weeks, as if this is a long time given the breadth of the campaign) North Carolina’s leaders will be too distracted to do their jobs. Can I offer a contrary view? (I know this will shock you.)
North Carolina’s leaders can and should be fixated on the war in Iraq. It is not only a critical issue for our security in itself, but also suggests some state and local policy issues for our politicians to tackle. Take domestic security, for example. It is the first and more crucial role of any government to protect the life, liberty, and property of its citizens. The war has obviously heightened the short-term risk of retaliatory attacks here at home by Islamofascist kooks. As our own Donna Martinez reported here a couple of days ago, North Carolina has not yet made the kind of progress we have the right to expect in preparing for terrorist incidents and tightening our security measures. Lawmakers shouldn’t be fashioning a state budget without at least considering this issue.
Nor can they ignore the fact that the deployment of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines from North Carolina military installations is having a dampening effect on our state’s economy. It’s largely a short-term effect — big-ticket purchases are likely being postponed, not cancelled, until the troops return home to their families — but it is real nonetheless. Our leaders should be motivated by this additional drag on our economic recovery to think long and hard about how best to expand our productive capacity and competitiveness. Here are some hints: building baseball stadiums and convention centers don’t constitute a serious response. Nor does another round of state or local tax increases in a state that essentially doubled its tax burden in the past two decades.
The war isn’t a distraction. It is a very real and scary reality that should be affecting our thinking and our actions on a number of public policy fronts.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.