Governor of Maine Angus S. King '66 spoke Friday afternoon about the importance of the free market in improving the economy in an age of increasing economic globalization.
King's lecture -- "The Lexus and the Pine Tree" -- followed his acceptance of the 1999 Nelson A. Rockefeller Distinguished Public Service Award.
To present the main points of his speech, King posed the question, "How did a liberal guy from the '60s come to veto a minimum-wage increase in Maine in 1998?"
In beginning to answer his own question, King described three formative experiences early in his career which affected his political motives.
First, he told of travelling through Eastern Europe in 1966, where he "saw communism face to face." In contrast to the left-wing ideas that he and his colleagues had embraced at Dartmouth, he now saw first-hand that communism "stunk," he said.
His second experience came upon finishing law school, when he decided to join the National Legal Services Program, a league of lawyers whose mission was to fight poverty.
King was assigned to work in Maine, where his job consisted of representing and advising low-income tenants threatened with eviction for not paying rent. He said he found that his efforts decreased the availability of low-income housing because landlords were forced to get out of the business when their tenants refused to pay.
King's third formative experience came while working as a lawyer in rural Skowhegan, Maine, where he saw how little his job helped with the lives of low-income citizens.
King then shifted his focus, speaking of the last 10 to 15 years as a period of globalization. He placed the late 1990s at the center of "the most important period since the Industrial Revolution," saying "the whole world is linked."
As support for this idea, King referred to Thomas L. Friedman's 1999 book "The Lexus and the Olive Tree," which speaks of globalization -- synchronization of world economies, and nations' resulting interdependence -- as the most important phenomenon in the world today.
As an example, King told of a shoe company based in Maine which was forced to move its operations to China because it could not compete in the face of the cheaper wages China is able to offer the new global economy.
He then emphasized the importance of not letting government become a "nanny state" which is overprotective of its citizens. Such a government, he said, faces the risk of becoming economically noncompetitive.
When he took office in 1994, King said, his vision was to do anything he could to increase the number of jobs in Maine, and he had two options: raise the minimum wage, or work to get the economy to a point where in order to stay competitive, businesses had to pay more than minimum wage.
King chose the latter option. He said he thought he was succeeding in "making minimum wage irrelevant."
King admitted that there are areas where his theory of allowing the market to control the economy rather than the government doesn't work well. He cited the environment and education as areas where government regulation was necessary.
King stressed the need to realize that "our standard of living isn't guaranteed" in times of a strong economy. While nations have often throughout history shown they can survive crises, "no society has ever shown it can survive success."
King concluded by fielding questions from the audience on such issues as school vouchers, federally subsidized health care, logging practices, Maine's moose population, and the question of whether he had any interest in the ideas of the Reform Party.
In answering that question, King said that although he has no interest in the party, he has befriended Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura, the party's controversial and most visible member.
He also indicated that he had no interest in making a career of politics, and that contrary to speculation, he will not consider running for Congress in 2002, when his second term as Governor expires.