This morning’s editorial in Raleigh’s News & Observer gets it just about right with its assessment of Pat McCrory’s bizarre foul-up of — of all things — the appointment of North Carolina’s poet laureate by ignoring the established processes and then compounding the error by appointing a person whom some have charitably described as “a beginner” in the field:

The state has on its college campuses a number of professional poets and teachers who would easily fit the bill as the position is described to demonstrate literary excellence and inspire it in others.

Whether McCrory intended it or not, his attitude toward this appointment raises suspicions that he’s just sort of thumbing his nose at the state’s literary community (liberals, maybe?). And he certainly was not well-served by staff members who should have known more and taken this appointment more seriously.

A good friend of NC Policy Watch, veteran North Carolina poet, author, political observer and longtime Peace College faculty member Sally Buckner of Cary, had this to say yesterday in a Facebook message:

As one who has studied our literary scene since the 1960s, I know why North Carolina is what Doris Betts called it: “the writingest state.” It’s because the literary community here is cooperative rather than competitive. Our poets laureate beginning with Sam Ragan have been major figures in making it so. And they’ve done so with little recompense. $15,000 a year doesn’t begin to pay for their travels, workshops, etc….  McCrory’s spokesperson lauds Ms. Macon’s interest in the homeless. I praise it, too–but it’s not a reasonable substitute for professional quality in poetry.

N.C. Poet Laureate Valerie Macon (Provided by N.C. Arts Council)

Both Sally and the N&O are right, of course — though the N&O may be giving the Guv too much credit. If he really wanted to stick it to the liberal intelligentsia he’d have had his staff find some kind of far right professor at a conservative Christian college or institute to put up for the job.

But that’s not how McCrory operates. In many ways, the appointment is actually reminiscent of the Guv’s equally bizarre decision last summer to deliver cookies to reproductive rights protesters outside the mansion. As in that episode, the Governor’s actions are like those of a distracted, partially-engaged college boy rather than a committed politician with any kind of coherent ideology or agenda.

Seen in this light, the fact that McCrory opted to select an anonymous state employee who has self-published some poetry as a kind of hobby as North Carolina’s poet laureate makes more sense. By selecting such a person the Guv has opted for someone like himself — a person who doesn’t fully comprehend his job or the fact that he doesn’t comprehend it.

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