Looking finer in Carolina.

• Author: Hood, John
• Position: Free & Clear

Left-leaning partisans created a myth about North Carolina's fabled progressive streak. With conservatives running state government, growth prospects look much rosier.

Although they might well spurn it, I have some sympathy for North Carolinians whose political leanings lie somewhere left of center. Over the last five years, they've witnessed dramatic change in the state they call home--so much change, in fact, that some liberals say they scarcely recognize the place.

North Carolinians once voted reliably Democratic for most state and local offices, even as they sometimes chose Republicans for president. No more. The GOP now controls the executive, legislative and judicial branches of state government, along with most county commissions. While there may be some truth to the "not a dime's worth of difference" rap on the two parties when it comes to running up deficits in Washington, the same can't be said of public policy in North Carolina. Republicans have pursued a markedly different course than their Democratic predecessors on matters ranging from taxes and spending to education policy and social issues.

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Change is a constant in human affairs. That doesn't make it any easier to handle. We can know intellectually that nothing is permanent, that new ideas and experiences may be good for us in the long run even as--or perhaps because--they make us uncomfortable in the short run. Yet change still can be unnerving.

In the case of nervous North Carolinians who disdain the recent turn to the right, many have responded by clinging ever tighter to a cherished myth. I call it North Carolina Exceptionalism. Developed over decades of political rhetoric, partisan journalism and historiography by liberal academics, the myth depicts North Carolina as a progressive oasis in a desert of ignorance, bigotry and economic stagnation known as the American South.

What made North Carolina better, the mythmakers posited, was relatively high spending on the University of North Carolina system and, to a lesser extent, other state programs. Instead of competing for businesses, jobs and people on the basis of lower costs --as pursued by lessening taxes and regulations to encourage private investment--our state competed successfully by focusing on public investment. We let the likes of South Carolina attract lower-skill, lower-wage industries. We had Charlotte banking, Triad logistics and Research Triangle Park. In addition, Exceptionalists...