RALEIGH — My friend Brad Crone and I had an exchange on “N.C. Spin” last week worth some additional comment. We were talking about the destruction caused by Hurricane Isabel and its economic and political consequences.
Brad, a prominent Democratic political consultant, noted that Gov. Mike Easley, Sen. Elizabeth Dole, and others had performed well and demonstrated leadership in the aftermath of the storm. Others on the “N.C. Spin” panel chimed in with effusive praise of their own. I didn’t disagree, but I decided to challenge the idea that elected politicians were personally responsible for most of what goes on in disaster relief.
It’s not as though governors and lawmakers “took hold of the twisted metal in their own hands” and personally worked it back into shape, I protested. State and local governments, power companies, and other institutions employ talented professionals who pretty much know what to do and how to do it. In the midst of crisis, the politicians’ job is primarily to avoid making bad, panicky decisions and to communicate important information effectively to the general public. Of course, long before (and after), they also have the important job of retaining, or not retaining, the professionals based on their performance.
Brad protested. He referred to former Gov. Jim Hunt’s tenure in office, arguing that politicians can and do make a huge difference. He cited an instance after a previous hurricane when Hunt personally directed the deployment of trucks carrying repair and relief supplies.
Frankly, this story — which I hadn’t heard before — sounded to me like those embarrassing tales of the Carter White House when the president, unable to delegate or set priorities for his time, supervised daily details of the staff and residence while big issues were ignored or, worse, horribly mishandled.
Let’s recall what Hunt’s real legacy was during the two big hurricanes of his third and fourth terms: Fran in 1996 and Floyd in 1999. In the case of Fran, the governor was in the midst of a re-election battle against then-state Rep. Robin Hayes, the Republican gubernatorial nominee. Seizing the opportunity just weeks before Election Day, Hunt helped facilitate the printing and distribution (at taxpayer expense) of FEMA circulars to thousands of voters bearing his prominent likeness and what amounted to a political pitch.
Three years later, the more-devasting Floyd led Hunt to commit serious public-policy errors. First, he and his administration inflated the true type and extent of the damage the storm caused to public programs and infrastructure in what I and many others saw as a transparent attempt to “pad the insurance claim,” the request for federal aid. Then, having called a special legislative session to design a package of state relief, Hunt proposed hundreds of millions more in “emergency disaster relief” for Eastern North Carolina than was justified, at first proposing either higher taxes or special state borrowing to pay the bill. When these initiatives elicited little support, he simply shoehorned the nearly $900 million cost into a state budget that he had already imperiled through reckless spending increases during the mid- to late-1990s. Then he slipped conveniently out of office in 2000.
The fiscal house soon came crashing down. Gov. Mike Easley was forced (though he shouldn’t have been so resistant initially) to tap into the Floyd relief reserve, which of course had been over-funded, in order to balance a series of tight budgets.
I don’t see Hunt as heroic in these instances. I see him as seeking to take advantage of natural disasters to accomplish political or policy objectives that he may well have passionately believed in — such as the rejuvenation of the Eastern North Carolina economy. I also see him as making poor, panicky decisions.
Easley deserves praise for, at least so far, not making the same mistakes. The crisis rule for politicians ought to be: First, do no harm. Second, do no harm. . .
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.