The Means (14 page)

TOM PAULEY

28

“Selling is at least half of what I do. For the first time I see the appropriateness of the election process. It's the best preparation there is for this crazy job.” Tom Pauley sounds embattled but it's the brawny talk of a man who's winning.

“You're selling well,” says Peter Brand, who stayed on as Tom's chief of staff after the election.

“I've been selling for a lot of years. If you're a trial attorney you need to sell the jury on your presentation of the facts. This is about the same thing, I just didn't realize I'd be doing so much of it. You know, the big difference is that when I was trying cases, I'd make a hundred decisions a day about the case on all sorts of matters big and small. Now the staff handles anything small. I set a policy and they do all the blocking and tackling. Instead of a hundred decisions a day, I make about three decisions a month. But they're big and I need to get them right.”

Peter Brand nods. He's come to know Tom and knows this kind of ruminating means he's decided on a course for something. “What's on your mind?”

“The Republican base is firmly for what we're doing. So we're selling our plan to independents. That's our target, but we need to expand that. I want to go talk to the core of the left.”

“You want to speak in front of a teachers union meeting?”

Tom nods. “Annual meetings are coming up. I may not win them over but maybe I can get them to view me as not evil. Maybe I can soften them. I know I just got in here, but maybe they'll be less motivated to vote against me next time even if they don't vote for me.”

“They're going to view you as evil no matter what. Your policy is to make them fireable and pinch their pensions. There'll be some very bad TV footage—you getting booed and shouted down, possibly you getting some crap thrown at you.”

“Who cares? If they treat me rough, that'll just fire up Republicans and it may offend some independents enough to come my way. I have thick skin.”

Brand thinks this over. Tom comes across as such a nice guy. He is a nice guy. “It could work. You want me to set something up?”

“Show me a few options where we can do this. I'd like to do it in the next few weeks.”

29

Tom is only four months into his administration. Fixing the public school systems was always a top agenda item through the campaign and a month earlier he was delivered the crisis he needed to make bold moves.

Three public schools in the Cumberland County system were exposed for cheating on standardized tests. Teachers had walked up and down the rows of students while giving the exam and announced that the answer to question number two was B, question number three was D. This was filmed by a student on an iPhone. The teachers released just enough answers to get a pass for the school without attracting unwanted attention.

The teachers in Cumberland don't feel guilt given the impossible task they have. The kids rarely show for class and when they do are either sedated by marijuana or are violent. A teacher doesn't have the opportunity to teach so all is fair in love, war, and insurmountable problems.

The states usually don't police this problem heavily. If the schools fail the tests or get caught cheating trying to pass, the state can lose the No Child Left Behind federal funding. If the state loses federal dollars, they need to raise the money somewhere else, usually by increasing property taxes. Nobody in North Carolina wants that.

When the Cumberland scandal broke, Tom knew he had what he needed. Fix the problem or everyone in the state is going to get a bigger tax bill because North Carolina might lose its federal funding.

Peter Brand enters Tom's office. “Okay, I have options and a recommendation. There's an American Federation of Teachers meeting in two months. I can get you on the speaker list for the AFT. But if you really want to go behind enemy lines, we should see the National Education Association next month. The AFT is teachers only. The NEA is more than teachers. It's school bus drivers, janitors, administrators. They don't care about the classroom so much, they just care about benefits, time off, work conditions for all the people paying them dues. They fight consolidation of schools even when it makes sense because that means fewer jobs for janitors and administrators. The NEA state chapter has an annual meeting in Raleigh next month. I called. They'll put you on the speaker list.”

“Do it.”

“Good. Consider it done.” Brand writes a note and while still looking down says, “How are you going to address them?” It's a question that is meant to lead to the opportunity to give his own opinion of the matter.

“These kids need a fair start. They need the fundamentals, and once you get that, then all the bigger stuff happens after school. I had plenty of time in school and it doesn't compare to getting out there and doing. I loved law school but I learned more in the first six months of practicing law.”

“You just touched on why universities are so liberal. It's the jaded professors. They think they're smarter and more valuable to society than lawyers, doctors, and forget about the bond traders. But we live in a society that thinks the best classroom is the real world so the guys out there doing it are making the most money and the professors are so poor they have to wear tweed jackets with holes at the elbow. They think we should live in a socialist society where the government determines that a bond trader makes a pauper's wage and that a university professor is our most distinguished position and is pegged at the highest wage.”

“They'd still wear the tweed jackets.”

“Designer tweed with fake holes.”

Tom leans back, interlocks his fingers, and rests them on his stomach while he looks up at the ceiling. “I don't want a fight with the unions. I want to connect with them. There's no question the schools have a problem; that's an objective fact. I just want to accomplish two things. Without getting into ideology or methods, I want everyone to agree there's a problem to be solved and to feel motivated to solve it.”

“No policy talk?”

“I'm going to talk problem first, then inspiration.”

“Inspiration? You want them to start believing in excellence?”

“I know. Utopian. Look, I'm relatively new to this, much newer than you, but it seems to me that in the business of politics, ideology doesn't matter that much. We're basically the same animals; ideology is just how we arrange ourselves. It depends on what kind of house you grew up in, were you a young R or a young D.”

Brand is a conservative thinker and he leans forward in disagreement. “Tom, I'll give it to you straight because that's the only thing I'm here to do. If you think we're all basically the same, you're way off the reservation. The differences are fundamental. A liberal thinks government is the best custodian of wealth. A conservative thinks it's private enterprise. With few exceptions, a liberal is a person who has either given up on being rich or has decided he's already rich enough. A conservative is trying to amass wealth.”

“That's fine, but I can't say any of that. These people may fit your category but they don't see it as the insult that you do. They won't be millionaires but they'll make fifty grand a year while teaching and fifty grand a year for life once they retire. That's the plan they signed on for and they don't want it threatened. They're not thinking in terms of rich or not rich or free enterprise. They're thinking in terms of security.” Tom's still looking at the ceiling. He likes these talks with Peter. They see things differently enough that it makes for good conversation. “There are ways to preserve a lot of that security. Especially for the good teachers. Hell, the good ones should be rewarded with much more. I need to inspire them to want greatness. Just a percentage of them. They can start to break the ranks that way.”

30

“You ready?” asks Brand. Tom's set for nine a.m. as the first speaker of the day, the union hoping for lower attendance at that time.

“I am. Without saying the word
competition
, I want to remind them that it's human nature to believe in competition.” Tom looks like a man on vacation about to walk to the beach for a swim. “We're going to do something important here today.” Tom knows Peter is angry that he wasn't involved in the speech writing and angrier still that he hasn't even been allowed to read the speech. “Peter, I value you. I also know where you stand on policy. This isn't a policy speech. It's a human speech and it needs to come from only me.”

Tom doesn't ask for absolution and Peter doesn't give it. Peter nods and they have a tense parting.

The Raleigh Convention Center opened in 2008. It's three levels, 150,000 square feet, and has a 32,000-square-foot ballroom where the NEA has three thousand chairs set up theater style and all the chairs are full at nine a.m. for the governor.

Tom takes the podium to zero applause. He puts his hands on the podium and smiles as though this is exactly the greeting he enjoys. “Thank you for the warm welcome.” This gets a few laughs.

His voice is calm and slow. “Y'all ever read any Vince Lombardi quotes? Whether you like football or not, and I know many of you do, they're just the best things going. ‘Winning is not everything, but wanting to win is. Winning is a habit, and unfortunately so is losing.'”

Tom takes a long pause to look around the room and connect with as many eyes as he can. His accent is extra folksy and Southern. He sounds like any man in the room. He continues, but in a voice that is faster and more harsh, “We are not winning. Our schools are not winning. Our children are not winning. North Carolina schools rank forty-six of the fifty states, this in a nation that has dropped to thirty-three in the world. Ladies and gentlemen, you are the custodians of a state education system that is the equivalent of a third world, underdeveloped country.”

Tom lets the insult set and looks around the silent room. “I'm not talking about Republicans or Democrats, liberals or conservatives. These are just the plain facts. We have a major problem on our hands and are now under the threat of losing federal dollars.” He points to the audience in cadence with these last three words. He takes a breath and slows his voice back down. “Let me go back to Vince Lombardi. ‘Leaders are not born, they are made. Like anything else they are made through hard work, and that's the price we have to pay to achieve any goal.' ‘The difference between a successful person and the others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but a lack of will.' ‘The measure of who we are is what we do with what we have.'”

Tom takes another break. He wants this talk to come in simple, digestible bites. “Lombardi has a million of these but none of them is the best. The best one of all belongs to my daddy. When I was a boy he gave me some advice. He said, ‘Son, it's not good to be a cocky person, but it's good to be cocky about one or two things.'” The crowd is silent. “He was right.” So far there's been no policy to boo about. “Now I was a pretty damn good lawyer, and I'm a damn good governor.” A few boos from the back of the room but few enough that individual voices are discernible. “Raise your hand if you feel cocky about our schools in North Carolina. Do you feel cocky about our standardized test scores?”

No hands are raised. Tom waits an extra long time with all hands in laps to drive the point. This is a rebuke and the rebuke has been acknowledged and accepted. “I didn't think so.” Tom has been getting a sense of the energy of the crowd. Some seemed to like the Lombardi stuff and he thinks now is the time. “Raise your hand if you want to feel cocky about our schools. If you think we can do better!”

A few hands go up, which spring a few more, and for a moment momentum builds, then levels off at about thirty percent of hands. Many more would raise their hand but are not willing to show support for this governor.

“You brave ones are the start of something great. We need to do better, people. We must. Today we are robbing the future of our children and that must stop. We need to reward our great teachers and we need to remove those that would cheat and throw our state into scandal. We must fix a system that is clearly broken and I am here to ask you to help do it now!”

A few cheers start to go up from younger people in the crowd, people who were touched by Lombardi and have had their coffee. The cheers are then countered by boos, concentrated in the front left corner of the theater-style seating where the union leadership sits. Several stream an open-mouthed boo while pumping their arms with palms to the ceiling to say to others, Get up and boo.

Tom waits while the sounds intermingle. This is the result he wanted. When it quiets he says, “We're letting our children down. Doing better starts right here, here in this room with all of you. Muhammad Ali said, ‘I will show you how great I am.'” Tom looks around. “Show me.” He pauses, then says louder, “Show me.” Then in his loudest voice, “Show me how great you are!” Tom hadn't been sure about using this part. On paper it felt overdone, but here it's working.

There's some clapping and more booing. “The fault of these test scores does not lie with our children. You know where it lies. We cannot sit by for this.” Tom looks to the leadership of the union which is the source of the boos in the corner. He's made the ground he wanted to make and he wants to end with a challenge. He makes eye contact with Terry Stanton who is the president of the North Carolina chapter of the NEA. “I leave you with one last Lombardi. ‘Show me a good loser and I'll show you a loser.'”

Tom keeps eye contact with Stanton an unnaturally long time then walks off the stage and the crowd is as silent as when he entered. He gets backstage where his nervous security detail flanks him and Peter Brand walks over to shake his hand. “Nice speech.”

“Thanks.”

“Interesting strategy.”

“I realized five minutes into drafting it that a Republican governor can't inspire them. I had to create a third person in the conversation that they can trust and believe in. And who can get away with insulting them. Who better than Lombardi?”

“I actually like the one from your dad the best. Really your dad?”

“No, that's actually me, but it sounded better from my dad. I need to be only a messenger today.”

“You're becoming a real politician. In the best way.” Brand smiles. “And Ali. That was nice.”

“I'm a Frazier fan myself, but that was a hell of a thing to say.”