RALEIGH – Mary Easley is not going to keep her current, controversial job at N.C. State University.
That’s not a prediction. It’s a fact. The president of the University of North Carolina system, Erskine Bowles, has asked the former First Lady to leave. The embattled chancellor of N.C. State, James Oblinger, has asked her to leave. The new chairman of the school’s board of trustees, former Lt. Gov. Bob Jordan, has asked her to leave. And key members of the North Carolina General Assembly, who control the university’s purse strings, have indicated a willingness to eliminate state funding for the position.
It defies understanding why Mary Easley thinks, in the face of all this, that she can retain her job.
I suspect that she knows she’s not staying. I think that last week’s press conference – at which her lawyer, Marvin Schiller, spoke but Mrs. Easley did not – wasn’t about staying at N.C. State. I think they had two goals: 1) defending Mary Easley’s professional reputation and 2) securing some kind of severance package from the university. The problem is that these two goals aren’t compatible. They’re in conflict.
Mrs. Easley may passionately believe that she obtained the N.C. State job on her own merits, rather than because of her last name. Few North Carolinians will ever agree with her. They will see continued efforts either to stay in the job or to secure a big cash severance from the university as evidence that Mrs. Easley is desperate and greedy, not that she has been ill-treated and unfairly maligned.
The best thing for her professional reputation would have been to step down graciously, denying the allegations of political favoritism but also recognizing that the allegations were harming both the university and her husband’s political legacy. If Mrs. Easley had done so, she might have won over some North Carolinians who didn’t think much of her husband but didn’t know what to think of her. Instead, she’s given them reason to think she’s pathetic.
Why did Mrs. Easley choose the self-destructive option? This brings me back to the column I wrote a couple of weeks ago on the inability of the political class to comprehend why the Easleys accepted all of the alleged special favors and travel subsidies in the first place. Having met and mingled with the First Couple over their 16 years on the Raleigh political scene, many North Carolina politicians, journalists, lobbyists, and activists still seem to have a hard time understanding how such intelligent people could have made so many unwise decisions.
But as any self-respecting Dungeons and Dragons alum could tell you – yes, some of us did survive the experience with our self-respect intact – there is a big difference between intelligence and wisdom.
Many smart people do dumb things. And many people who have little capacity for memorizing large quantities of knowledge, grasping complex philosophical or scientific ideas, or breaking complex problems into solvable parts will nevertheless make wise decisions about their personal finances and relationships. Intellection and judgment are separate traits.
It would now be wise for the Easleys to exit the public spotlight quickly and make whatever arrangements are necessary to ensure their legal defense. Apparently, they’re not going to. But Mary Easley’s job at N.C. State is going to go “poof” anyway. The die is cast – and no matter how many sides it has, we know what the result will be.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation