The Scarlet Pimpernel
2009-12-04 - by
Once I asked a friend what he thought of a prominent South Carolina politician and he laughed and said, Well, you know what they say about LeRoy – he hasn’t met a principle since high school.
Back when she was running for Governor, Beverly Perdue promised liberals and environmentalists there was never, ever, ever going to be offshore oil-drilling in North Carolina on her watch. Then after she got their votes in the primary she turned around and said maybe offshore drilling wasn’t such a bad idea – to get votes from folks worried about soaring gas prices.
There are some politicians with agenda’s (President Obama’s got an agenda) but there are other politicians who just want a career in politics and to them agendas are as useless as a screen door on a submarine.
Now the gremlin in the works when it comes to that second species of politician is that not having an agenda just naturally leads to a state of vacillation – their lodestar is to get reelected and since, at heart, they don’t fundamentally care, say, if taxes go up or down they’re like political weathervanes changing directions with the wind. That usually works out fine in the short run – after all, Beverly Perdue did win election – but over the long haul the vacillations add up and take on a life of their own and become flip-flops.
With the political winds changing daily over the last six months Governor Perdue’s been spinning like a top calculating and recalculating how to get re-elected and in the process she’s been on both sides of half a dozen issues: She announced she was for cutting spending. Then she announced she was against cutting spending. She said she was never, ever going to raise taxes. Then she announced the only answer to the state’s economic crisis was to raise taxes $2 billion. Her first day in office she announced she was going to clean up politics – then she turned around and put a lobbyist in charge of the biggest department in state government and let him pass out $250 million in no bid contracts (a lot of them to his former clients).
The Governor’s the Scarlet Pimpernel of North Carolina politics – She’s here, She’s there, She’s everywhere – and just a couple of days ago on WRAL-TV she did it again. She looked the camera straight in the eye and chirped how she was building roads in Charlotte “without raising the gas tax, which I’m not going to do ever” – but what she forgot was just last summer she signed a bill to raise the gas tax.
The Scarlet Pimpernel
2009-12-04/
Once I asked a friend what he thought of a prominent South Carolina politician and he laughed and said, Well, you know what they say about LeRoy – he hasn’t met a principle since high school.
Back when she was running for Governor, Beverly Perdue promised liberals and environmentalists there was never, ever, ever going to be offshore oil-drilling in North Carolina on her watch. Then after she got their votes in the primary she turned around and said maybe offshore drilling wasn’t such a bad idea – to get votes from folks worried about soaring gas prices.
There are some politicians with agenda’s (President Obama’s got an agenda) but there are other politicians who just want a career in politics and to them agendas are as useless as a screen door on a submarine.
Now the gremlin in the works when it comes to that second species of politician is that not having an agenda just naturally leads to a state of vacillation – their lodestar is to get reelected and since, at heart, they don’t fundamentally care, say, if taxes go up or down they’re like political weathervanes changing directions with the wind. That usually works out fine in the short run – after all, Beverly Perdue did win election – but over the long haul the vacillations add up and take on a life of their own and become flip-flops.
With the political winds changing daily over the last six months Governor Perdue’s been spinning like a top calculating and recalculating how to get re-elected and in the process she’s been on both sides of half a dozen issues: She announced she was for cutting spending. Then she announced she was against cutting spending. She said she was never, ever going to raise taxes. Then she announced the only answer to the state’s economic crisis was to raise taxes $2 billion. Her first day in office she announced she was going to clean up politics – then she turned around and put a lobbyist in charge of the biggest department in state government and let him pass out $250 million in no bid contracts (a lot of them to his former clients).
The Governor’s the Scarlet Pimpernel of North Carolina politics – She’s here, She’s there, She’s everywhere – and just a couple of days ago on WRAL-TV she did it again. She looked the camera straight in the eye and chirped how she was building roads in Charlotte “without raising the gas tax, which I’m not going to do ever” – but what she forgot was just last summer she signed a bill to raise the gas tax.