RALEIGH – Who did Gov. Mike Easley think he was kidding?
The governor gave his final State of the State address to the North Carolina General Assembly on Monday night. He made no mention at all of the top two political stories of the year – the Jim Black scandal and the Duke rape-charge fiasco – despite the fact that he has at least a peripheral role in each story. Easley did manage to include a brief, nebulous reference to ethics in government, but said nothing of substance about what has been done or what should be done.
If Easley thought that walking through a pigsty with a clothespin on his nose would make everyone else smell roses, he was seriously deluded. The biggest news of his speech was, indeed, his lack of reference to Black. It’s pretty much all the speech will be remembered for. Given the contemporaneous news reporting that the felonious former speaker was going to plead guilty Tuesday to additional crimes, the omission was pointless and unforgivable.
Though Easley’s political skills and history of electoral victories are impressive and undeniable, he has never been good at the formal role of being governor. His predecessors were. Jim Hunt was loquacious, fully and obviously in charge of his administration, and ubiquitous (to the point of sometimes being a pest). Jim Martin, a former chemistry professor, was diplomatic, forceful, open (he held a weekly, no-holds-barred press conference), and thoughtful (to the point of sometimes letting his speeches shade into lectures).
The Black investigation is wide-ranging, ongoing, and devastating. His bribery and extortion racket, previously known as a four-term House speakership, has subjected the people of North Carolina to wasteful and abusive government. It has subjected the state of North Carolina to national opprobrium and ridicule. The existence of Black’s criminal enterprise was critical to the success of Easley’s legislative program, most notably the passage of a state-run lottery in 2005. To pass over all of this without any specific reference to Black, or more than a passing reference to ethics, was a gross error in Easley’s part. My guess is that neither Hunt nor Martin would have made it, though it’s hard to know for sure because no comparable political scandals occurred on their respective watches (the scandals that did occur involved either lower-level government officials or personal misbehavior outside of government).
Some members of the General Assembly may have been relieved that Easley didn’t talk about the scandal. It’s not over, and they might be next in the prosecutorial crosshairs. But Easley represents the voters of the entire state, not the ranks of state officials in Raleigh. It was his challenge to express the outrage of his constituency, to spell out lessons for public servants to take to heart, and to propose any additional rules or policy changes that might address the abuse of power in state government. Apparently, Easley was not up to the challenge.
Instead, he entered a building with a Black cloud hanging overhead and pretended it was sunny. He talked taxes, education, and giveaway programs. My purpose today is not to criticize his policy agenda – that time will come – but to argue that even if his policy agenda had been my own, I would still have seen his omissions and evasions as ill-advised and irresponsible.
The speech wasn’t leadership. It wasn’t even in the satellite parking lot of the leadership terminal.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.