Perdue So Far
July 13, 2009 - by
Cullen Browder at WRAL asked me to rate Governor Perdue’s first six months in office.
I think she’s doing pretty well. Give her a B. An A if she would take a stronger role in resolving the budget.
She took over the ship of state in a hurricane: a bad economy and the worst budget crisis since the Depression.
And the ship had some bad rot – scandals and mismanagement.
The best thing she has done is set a new tone of openness and candor. She had to do that to separate herself from Mike Easley. She has won points with the media, which is no small feat.
Her weakness has been a tendency to hesitate and vacillate. She started with a strong pledge to fight any cuts in the classroom. Then came classroom cuts. She alienated her strongest supporters. Her poll numbers dropped.
Now she’s taken a stand for higher taxes – politically risky, but that’s what leaders do. Even there, she has been less resolute than she should be.
The gold standard for governors – in my biased opinion – is Jim Hunt. Perdue suffers from that comparison because there aren’t many people around who remember that Hunt had some stumbles his first six months back in 1977. There was some disorganization in his office and Cabinet.
But Hunt had a great strength: He never hid from bad news. When he found problems, he fixed them. In 1977, he brought in two strong senior advisers, Joe Pell and John A. Williams.
Hunt did not have one problem that Perdue seems to struggle with: how to handle the legislature. She spent a lot of her life there, and she has heard legislators complaining about governors for more than 20 years. So she seems reluctant to be too strong.
She needs to get over that. She is governor, not a senator. She has the veto. She has the bully pulpit. She has the responsibility.
She is still learning how to lead. And she needs to lead the state out of the budget mess now.
Perdue So Far
July 13, 2009/
Cullen Browder at WRAL asked me to rate Governor Perdue’s first six months in office.
I think she’s doing pretty well. Give her a B. An A if she would take a stronger role in resolving the budget.
She took over the ship of state in a hurricane: a bad economy and the worst budget crisis since the Depression.
And the ship had some bad rot – scandals and mismanagement.
The best thing she has done is set a new tone of openness and candor. She had to do that to separate herself from Mike Easley. She has won points with the media, which is no small feat.
Her weakness has been a tendency to hesitate and vacillate. She started with a strong pledge to fight any cuts in the classroom. Then came classroom cuts. She alienated her strongest supporters. Her poll numbers dropped.
Now she’s taken a stand for higher taxes – politically risky, but that’s what leaders do. Even there, she has been less resolute than she should be.
The gold standard for governors – in my biased opinion – is Jim Hunt. Perdue suffers from that comparison because there aren’t many people around who remember that Hunt had some stumbles his first six months back in 1977. There was some disorganization in his office and Cabinet.
But Hunt had a great strength: He never hid from bad news. When he found problems, he fixed them. In 1977, he brought in two strong senior advisers, Joe Pell and John A. Williams.
Hunt did not have one problem that Perdue seems to struggle with: how to handle the legislature. She spent a lot of her life there, and she has heard legislators complaining about governors for more than 20 years. So she seems reluctant to be too strong.
She needs to get over that. She is governor, not a senator. She has the veto. She has the bully pulpit. She has the responsibility.
She is still learning how to lead. And she needs to lead the state out of the budget mess now.