6 THE PERQUIMANS WEEKLY, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 9,2016
Perspectives
Differences should not stop NC from finding way forward
R ALEIGH—As I write this, the ballot
ing isn’t yet over in North Carolina.
But here’s an election result I can
forecast with absolute confidence: most
North Carolinians, like most Americans,
will be dissatisfied with the outcome.
I don’t just mean that roughly half the
voters will end up supporting losing candi
dates for president, governor, U.S. Senate,
and other statewide contests. For months,
it has been clear that North Carolina would
be a tightly contested battleground. We
were also a tightly contested battleground
for president, at least, in 2008 and 2012, so
this is nothing new.
What really is new — perhaps even un
precedented in American political history
— is that both major-party candidates for
president have higher disapproval ratings
than approval ratings. Outside of hard-
core partisans, voters across the ideologi
cal spectrum dislike and distrust Donald
Trump and Hillary Clinton. It seems likely
the next president will enter the White
House cloaked in suspicion and dogged by
scandal.
Here in North Carolina, the contest be
tween Richard Burr and Deborah Ross
rates as one of the nation’s roughest Senate
races, according to the Wesleyan
Media Project, with 65 percent of
the ads aired attacking the other
candidate and only eight percent
offering a positive agenda. And ei
ther Pat McCrory or Roy Cooper
will win one of the most brutal
and expensive races for gover
nor in state history. It is the sec
ond-most-negative gubernatorial
contest this year, according to the
Wesleyan dataset, with 59 percent
of the ads rated as negative and 19
percent as positive.
I share the concerns of many
North Carolinians, again across
the spectrum, about how the
2016 cycle has played out. I
JOHN
HOOD
share their disappointment with the actions
of many candidates, party leaders, activists,
and media figures. But I haven’t yielded to
pessimism.
Indeed, I still see reasons for optimism
— about the Tar Heel State, anyway. Look,
there’s not much chance of anything good
oozing from our toxic-waste dump of a
presidential race. But at the state level, the
past few months have produced a ground-
swell of interest in promoting civil dialogue
and elevating the standards and
Columnist practices of competitive politics.
Early this year, a new project
called the North Carolina Leader
ship Forum made its debut. Af-
filiated with Duke University’s
Sanford School of Public Policy
and encompassing a broad range
of current and emerging leaders,
NCLF has given liberals, conser
vatives, centrists, and libertarians
‘a valuable opportunity to develop
personal connections, explore
complex sets of data and argu
ments, and better understand
how people with good intentions
and shared goals can form en
tirely different opinions about
what government should do.
NCLF is funded by the Duke Endowment
and two charitable foundations whose
grantees usually find themselves diametri
cally opposed on matters of public policy
- the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation and the
John William Pope Foundation, for which I
serve as president. Reynolds and Pope are
also jointly funding several other projects
and initiatives at the moment — including
the N.C. Institute of Political Leadership,
the news service EducationNC, and the ed
ucation group BEST NC — and even com
pared notes recently about disaster relief in
the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew.
These efforts aren’t about trying to con
verge to some kind of moderate consensus.
That’s unrealistic and unnecessary. North
Carolina is a large and growing state of
diverse people and varying viewpoints. As
should be obvious by now, I have strong
opinions. I like talking about them, trying to
persuade others I’m right, and then adjust
ing my thinking to new information or good
arguments as warranted. The goals should
be to debate our differences more construc
tively, seek agreement where possible, and
lift the conversation above vicious ridicule
and character assassination.
I don’t mean to diminish the coming chal
lenge. The blades of 2016 cut deep wounds.
It will take discernment, diplomacy, and
diligence to bind them up and begin moving
forward. We will stride and we will stumble.
But both will be steps in the right direction.
That’s what healthy politics looks like. Per
haps North Carolina can model it for a na
tion yearning for something better.
John Hood is chairman of the
John Locke Foundation.
ADDRESSES
NC SENATE
Bill Cool (R)
N.C. Senate
300 N. Salisbury Street, Room 525
Raleigh, NC 27603-5925
(919) 715-8293
Bill.Cook@ncleg.net
NC HOUSE
Bob Steinburg (R)
919-733-0010
NC House of Representatives
300 N. Salisbury St.,
Room 306 A2
Raleigh, NC 27603
bob.steinburg@ncleg.net
US HOUSE
Walter B. Jones Jr. (R)
202-225-3415
252-931-1003
2333 Rayburn HOB
Washington, DC 20515 cong-
jones@mail.house.gov
Letters to the Editor
New Interstate 87 is not without problems for our area
Dear Editor,
Recent news in Edenton showed
a photo of the governor unveiling
an Interstate road sign as the lo
cal politicians flapped their hands
like a bunch of seals waiting for
someone to throw them some fish.
If Interstate 87 does indeed evolve,
the local residents and merchants
need to understand one thing. In
terstate Highways have limited
access. That means that all those
center turn lanes, cut throughs,
and U turn lanes will ultimately
disappear.
Many of the roads that currently
access Route 17 will be cut off or
rerouted. There are no traffic lights
on Interstates so all turns will be
by an elevated highway, not a jug
handle. You may have to drive two,
three or four miles or more to make
a U turn. Route 87 will be just like
the Route 17 bypass around Eden
ton or Elizabeth City or Route 64
to Rocky Mount. Existing Route
17 businesses will die. In addition,
there will be no agricultural equip
ment allowed on the Interstate un
less you can reach 45 mph.
More jobs? Unless someone can
entice a corporate business to the
region the only new jobs will be
temporary construction jobs to
build the overpasses. New busi
nesses are based on area popula
tion density and natural or human
resource location, not someone
requesting your vote.
Local residents, and especially
merchants, need to keep abreast of
all public meetings. Tell the county
planner and county commissioner
what your needs are. Your busi
ness is important to our region.
Retain your road access. Politi
cians will say that this is a great
Interstate from Raleigh to Norfolk
and promise all these benefits, but
slowing people down to stop and
shop in our towns is more impor
tant to us.
Bob Escheman
Hertford
What does it take to embarrass Democrats like Hillary?
Dear Editor,
The picture of Michele Obama
embracing Hillary Clinton was
plastered all over the media this
past week. That one photo, I main
tain, is emblematic of everything
that’s wrong with the Democratic
Party: the wife of the President of
the United States — who actually
detests Secretary Clinton — low
ering herself to embrace the most
corrupt liar of any presidential
candidate in the history of this
country. Which begs the question,
“What does it take to embarrass
Democrats?”
I might ask that question of
Nancy Theodore who should be
embarrassed by her letter to the
editor on Oct. 26 that was filled
with distorted facts and glaring
omissions to refute my negative
observations on Barack Obama’s
legacy. Ms. Theodore has always
been consistent in her support of
Obama’s disastrous Affordable
Care Act, his budget-busting tax
and spend policies, his extra-con
stitutional executive orders, his
job-killing regulations, his sympa
thies for Muslims, and his treason
ous Iran agreement. For all these
failures she still blames Bush and
the Republicans. We can search in
vain through all her letters critical
of me to find anything critical of
Obama and the Democrats.
After all the WikiLeak expo
sures of Clinton corruption, after
Director Comey’s announcement
that the FBI is reopening its inves
tigation into Hillary’s emails, what
more does Ms. Theodore need to
be embarrassed by Democrats? If
Hillary Clinton came to Hertford,
would Ms. Theodore stand in line
to give her a hug?
Claude Milot
Hertford
Clinton, not Trump, more suited to improving people’s lives
A few weeks ago I met a guy in Idaho
who was absolutely certain that Don
ald Trump would win this election. He
was wearing tattered, soiled overalls, missing
a bunch of teeth and was unnaturally skinny.
He was probably about 50, but his haggard
face looked 70. He was getting by aimlessly
as a handyman.
I pointed to the polls and tried to persuade
him that Hillary Clinton might win, but it was
like telling him a sea gull could play billiards.
Everybody he knows is voting Trump so his
entire lived experience points to a Trump
landslide. He was a funny, kind guy, but you
got the impression his opportunities had
been narrowed by forces outside his con
trol.
One of the mandates for the next presi
dent is to help improve the life stories of
people like that.
Trump speaks to this man’s situation and
makes him feel heard. But when you think
practically about which candidate could im
prove his life, it’s clear that Clinton is the big
ger change agent.
Let’s start with what “change” actually
means. In our system, change means legisla
tion. It starts with the ability to gather a team
of policy experts who can craft complex
bills. These days, bills often run to thousands
of pages, and every bad rookie de
cision can lead things astray.
Then it requires political deft
ness. Deft politicians are not always
lovely, as Lyndon Johnson demon
strated, but they are subtle, cunning
and experienced. They have the
ability to work noncontentiously
with people they don’t like, to read
other people’s minds, to lure oppo
nents over with friendship, cajolery
and a respectful nudge.
Craftsmanship in government
is not like craftsmanship in busi
ness. You can’t win people with
money and you can’t order peo
ple around. Governance requires ■
Columnist
DAVID
BROOKS
enormous patience, a capacity to tolerate
boredom and the skill of quiet herding. Frus
trations abound. When it is done well, as a
friend of mine in government puts it, each
individual day sucks but the overall experi
ence is tremendously rewarding.
Change in government is a team sport.
Public opinion is mobilized through institu
tions — through interest groups, activist or
ganizations, think tanks and political parties.
As historian Sean Wilentz once put it, “politi
cal parties have been the only reliable elec
toral vehicles for advancing the ideas and
interests of ordinary voters.” To
create political change, you have
to work within groups and orga
nize groups of groups.
Now, if you wanted to design a
personality type perfectly ill suited
to be a change agent in government,
you would come up with Donald
Trump: solipsistic, impatient, com
bative, unsubtle and ignorant.
If you wanted to design a per
sonality type better suited to get
ting things done, you might come
up with James Baker, Robert
Gates or Ted Kennedy, but you
might also come up with Hillary
• Clinton.
None of us should be under any illusions.
Wherever Clinton walks, the whiff of scan
dal is always by her side. The Clintons seem
to have decided that they are righteous and
good, and therefore anything that enriches,
empowers or makes them feel good must al
ways be righteous and good. They surround
themselves with some amazing people but
also some human hand grenades who inevi
tably blow up in their faces.
But Clinton does possess the steady, pe
dantic skills that are necessary for govern
mental change: the ability to work doggedly
hard, to master details and to rally the pow
erful. If the Clinton campaign emails have
taught us anything, it is that she and her
team, while not hugely creative, are prudent,
calculating and able to create a web of inter
locking networks that they can mobilize for
a cause.
Passing legislation next year is going to
be hard, but if Clinton can be dull and prag
matic, and operate at a level below the cable
TV ideology wars, it’s possible to imagine her
gathering majorities behind laws that would
help people like that guy in Idaho: an infra
structure push, criminal justice reform, a col
lege tuition program, an apprenticeship and
skills program, an expanded eamed-income
tax credit and a bill to secure the border and
shift from low-skill to high-skill immigration.
Many of us disagree strongly with many.
Clinton policies. But any sensible person can
distinguish between an effective operating
officer and a whirling disaster who is only
about himself.
The thing about reality TV is that it isn’t
actually real. In the real world, the process of
driving change is usually boring, remorseless
and detail oriented, but the effect on people
out there, like the guy in Idaho, can be pro-
found and beautiful.
New York Times News Service
THE Perquimans Weekly
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