Thinking out loud.

• Author: Noland, Terrance
• Position: John Locke Foundation Pres. John Hood

Want an earful? Just ask the president of the John Locke Foundation if he believes laissez faire gets a fair shake.

John Hood zips down Raleigh's Beltline in his teal-green Saturn, a "Starfleet Academy" sticker stripped across the rear window and Paganini oozing out the back speakers. Late for lunch with a newspaper editor, the president of the John Locke Foundation is trying to explain how his libertarian think tank, once written off as a coven of right-wing reactionaries, has become a force in state politics.

"It always takes time for a new organization to build credibility," says Hood, who's wearing these massive sunglasses that make him look like a giant fly - an oddly appropriate image for North Carolina's biggest gadfly. "Even now, people don't always understand what we're about. We still get people who think we're the John Birch Society. And we get calls all the time from people asking to speak to Mr. Locke. 'Can I apply for a grant from Mr. Locke?' Well, probably not, unless you have a seance or something. Which, by the way, is a sad commentary on the educational standard in North Carolina. Every high-school graduate should know who John Locke is."

He's off on a tangent. His mind whirls like this all the time. He's got a take on everything, and inevitably it turns into a call for limiting government's scope. Public schools failing? Simple. Offer private-school-tuition tax credits and let free-market competition work its magic.

He fancies himself an enlightened thinker in the vein of the foundation's namesake, the 17th-century English philosopher who championed individuals' rights. In his eyes, the Raleigh-based Locke Foundation, a nonprofit group that researches and writes about local and state public-policy issues, is North Carolina's lone light of reason in a fog of misinformation and misperceptions. Think of him as a Tar Heel Socrates, pestering policymakers and holding them up to his personal ideals.

Funny thing is, people are starting to listen. When The Wall Street Journal ran a story in December about bloated unemployment-insurance funds in the Southeast, it was based largely on Locke Foundation research. When Gov. Jim Hunt - a Democrat, for crissake - called a special legislative session for February to cut the state's unemployment-insurance tax, he made the announcement at a Locke function.

With politicians and the public hungry for information on big, bad government, Hood, 30, has become the man of the moment. You hear him on the radio, you read his quotes in the newspapers, you see him on TV - this scrawny, baby-faced guy with the bulging forehead, methodically laying out his case. Never flustered, never at a loss for words.

President since January, he has been the face man since the foundation opened six years ago. Going after some of the holiest of the state's sacred cows, it has blasted the UNC system for doing a poor job of educating undergraduates. It has ridiculed the Global TransPark as a "fiasco." It has railed against state funding for the North carolina Biotechnology Center and MCNC, the microelectronics center. Last year, it even ripped the Republican-led state House for not going far enough with budget cuts.

The Locke Foundation and Hood have made a name for themselves. Whether they've made an impact on public policy is another matter. Critics contend the group is riding the conservative wave, not pushing it. Hood, they claim, is a media creation, good for a quote but not much substance.

"John Hood is like Alan Keyes - glib and articulate, a mile wide and an inch thick," says Seth Effron, editor of the insider, a daily fax newsletter on state government. "He has a strong ideological point of view, and he's good at expressing it. But he's not an expert on North Carolina government, by any stretch of the imagination."

Maybe so. But he's not about to shut up.

Look at this," Hood says, pointing to a line in a report he's holding. "Facility management. That's basically clipping the lawns, that kind of stuff: $16 million. And, get this, the state has its own courier service. That's just people getting into their cars and driving to Charlotte to drop off a document. That's insane." He spots one that really cracks him up. "They have their own temp agency," he says, wheezing with laughter.

He's parading all this before Arch Allen, co-chairman of Republican Richard Vinroot's campaign for governor. Hood put the report together to show how much money the state could save if it contracted out Department of Administration services. Bottom line: $16 million to $29 million, he claims.

Hood has invited Allen by for a conversation about issues that will come up in the race. Actually, it's been more like a monologue, as Hood has rambled on for 50 minutes on the evils of incentives, the absurdity of a fat unemployment-insurance fund and, of course, the brilliance of his plan to privatize government services. Allen's role has mostly been to...