Wobble But Don’t Fall

by John Hood

And so it begins.

After a weekend of online chatter, media spin, and political fulminations, there can be no doubt that the end of the 2013 legislative session was, in truth, the start of the 2014 election cycle. The political class in Raleigh — including longtime Democratic lobbyists and powerbrokers, liberal journalists, and politically active professors — is having a collective temper tantrum. Accustomed to having their advice heeded by elected officials, these elites are hopping mad that the new Republican leaders of state government ignored them and enacted the conservative reforms of taxes, regulation, education, and other programs North Carolina voters were promised last year.

Hey, I feel the liberals’ pain. I’ve been where they are, many times. It can be frustrating. Sometimes you have to let off some steam.

While they are doing so, however, North Carolina conservatives inside and outside government need to respond effectively. While answering reasonable questions and debating reasonable people, they should not take the bait of those who simply want to provoke a self-defeating rejoinder. In other words, be confident and firm. Don’t be obnoxious or angry.

Remember the classic Weeble toys? By following solid principles of design, “Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down.” Good leaders exhibit a similar characteristic. They aren’t so rigid that events fail to move them. But they don’t let sudden shocks or obstacles defeat them. They take in as much information as they can, develop a strategy, implement it, and judge or adjust it according to results — not in response to fleeting whims, negative press, or personal attacks.

On the paramount issue of North Carolina’s economic recovery, at least, state lawmakers and Gov. Pat McCrory took actions in 2013 that were based on sound principles, extensive empirical support, and the best ideas borrowed from states and countries with stronger economic performance than North Carolina has experienced over the past 15 years. That’s why they:

• Replaced North Carolina’s multi-rate income tax, topping out at 7.75 percent, with a flat-rate tax of 5.75 percent and slashed the state’s corporate tax from 6.9 percent down to as low as 3 percent while reducing or eliminating dozens of special tax breaks and exclusions.

• Improved state government’s balance sheet by shoring up reserves, speeding up the repayment of $2.5 billion in unemployment-insurance debt, and imposing a debt limit that will force future legislatures to submit bond packages to voter approval (a constitutional principle that state politicians have managed to evade since 2000).

• Required all state regulations to undergo regular reviews every 10 years. Rules that no longer comply with state law or produce more benefits than costs will automatically expire.

• Replaced teacher tenure with multi-year contracts, introduced merit pay, assigned schools letter grades based on performance, strengthened charter schools, and offered private-school scholarships to as many as 13,000 students with below-average household incomes or special learning needs.

• Rewrote the state’s funding formula for highways and other transportation infrastructure, redirecting dollars from pork-barrel projects to high-priority investments that will alleviate traffic congestion and create jobs.

These and other policy changes may be unpopular with the political class in Raleigh, but they were precisely the right steps to take to hasten North Carolina’s economic recovery. Some of them will bear immediate fruit. Others will take years to affect the state’s economic performance.

In the meantime, North Carolina conservatives should heed the counsel of Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.

Or as Winston Churchill put it, “You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.” No one will fault a wobble here or there. Just don’t fall down.

John Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and an NC Spin Panelist