Legendary political scientist Vladimir Orlando Key (V.O. to his friends) hatched a progressive image of North Carolina in 1949 in his seminal work “Southern Politics in State and Nation that many knowledgeable folks thought was contrary to the facts. In fact, when Jack Bass and Walter DeVries updated Southern Politics in their The Transformation of Southern Politics in 1976, they titled their chapter on North Carolina “The Myth of Progressivism.”
That’s what John Locke Foundation President John Hood was getting at in these comments in today’s Herald-Sun:
“I think the governor should have blown the whistle on Nifong long before he did,” said John Hood, director of the John Locke Foundation, a Raleigh-based think tank.
“That might have helped the situation for the governor of North Carolina to provide a clear case in which Mike Nifong lied,” Hood said. “The governor is not really a hero in this story — and he could have been.”
Hood also said he believes there are those in Tar Heel state politics who do not understand the national damage caused by Nifong’s actions because they are used to thinking about North Carolina as having some elevated status in the South.
“And I think that what this case makes North Carolina look like is a Louisiana political system with a Mississippi economy,” Hood said. (Emphasis added)
Now, I’m just wondering how long it will take for him to get an angry call from Haley Barbour.
