Okay, time’s almost up for Oregonians to pick their next governor (and no…the Republicans aren’t winning this one…their candidates frankly suck. Alley? Dudley? No star power there. A center that Blazer fans used to make fun of and a guy no one cares about with a name that kinda rhymes. Ron Lim has the most star power, but he makes almost no sense in a debate.)
I get it. Everyone is desperate, afraid of losing their jobs, overworked, desperate to get a job, desperate to feel the good times of the 90’s again. They think that voting for John Kitzhaber is going to bring that all back. After all, he had the pleasure of riding a national boom in the mid to late 90’s and got out when things were still clicking. His hand chosen predecessor had the misfortune of being stuck riding a national bust, popping back up for a few years by being propped up by fake money, only to drop back down again.
We get it. And I have nothing but the most utmost respect for John Kitzhaber as a person. He’s a great guy. But here’s an example of what John Kitzhaber is…he’s getting walloped in a debate on the issues by Bill Bradbury…then suddenly, somewhere in the audience, a man has trouble breathing. Kitzhaber leaps off the stage, performs CPR, and saves the man’s life. He gets back up on stage, and what can a guy with MS like Bradbury do about that? You think he was going to hop on his Segway and roll down there and do the chest pumps? At that point the poor guy can’t do anything but play nice in a debate where he shouldn’t HAVE to play nice.
That’s the thing: Kitzhaber is all show. He’s a guy in great physical shape who has the charisma, says the “feel good” things, and looks the part. But when you put the guy on the spot, he knows far, far less about policy and getting things done than Bill Bradbury. Kitzhaber isn’t going to bring back the 90’s, if the economy swings back, it’s because it happens on a national level. But why do you think Al Gore, Howard Dean, and Barbara Roberts have ALL endorsed Bradbury? Bradbury is a guy who is madly in love with Oregon and has been for almost 40 years. Over almost his entire career, he’s fought to protect Oregon’s environment from turning into a major dumping ground for California and Washington. If you’re a rancher, do you really think turning the land into a waste pit is a great way to improve your wheat yield or have healthy livestock? If you’re an outdoorsman, do you really want to have to go to Alaska to do some hunting or fishing? If you’re a hiker or runner…well, it’s obvious you don’t want to counterbalance your workout by inhaling toxic crap. And while he’s only been able to do so much, anyone who’s been to California or Washington often can tell that Oregon is just a whole lot cleaner.
Bradbury has done a tremendous job of balancing economic development with environmental protection. If you want proof, go to any other state and take a close look at how well they’ve fared. We may have a tough time with unemployment right now, but our jobs here in Oregon pay a whole lot more than a lot of other states in this country…and unfortunately, a lot of the unemployment right now is the side effect of dropping taxes on corporations in an attempt to keep higher paying jobs here. The side effect was that with lower corporate tax revenues, the state could not employ as many people and provide as much funding for as many projects that other states have done to keep their unemployment numbers down. That, along with property values that have been appraised way too high that aren’t deflating to a more realistic value have stifled an Oregon job recovery.
Anyway, I’m sure John Kitzhaber will win the primary, and like a good luck charm, will do a fine job of riding the national recovery and come away looking like a hero again. I just think that Bill Bradbury has the policy know-how to help leave this state in even better condition than Kitz will. But hey, maybe Kitz really is a good luck charm. After all, he did a great job of cozying up with Bill Clinton and Rahm Emanuel back in the 90’s. All he had to do was tell people he was a “new Democrat” over and over…then like Clinton, get out of office before the whole thing came tumbling down. The lesson we were supposed to learn from the 90’s was that the lesson about image being everything we learned in the 80’s was totally stupid. Saying the “right words” to “keep the stock market stable” was crazy. Playing with interest rates was crazy. Making bets against bets was crazy. Has Kitz learned that lesson since his first go-around? We can hope. Because the 90’s, just like the 80’s, were obviously bullshit. This last decade was our wake up call. The economic system that our nation has been obsessed with for the past 30 years doesn’t work here. We either have to come up with something entirely new, or fall back on a system that worked reasonably well…the system we had in place before we tried this goofy experiment with economic libertarianism.