Portland, Oregon businessman John Barrows let loose recently in Portland's big daily paper, The Oregonian, with a guest op-ed titled "Admit It: We're Mediocre And We Don't Care."

Oregon is an also-ran when comes to education, business competitiveness and leadership. That's apparently what most Oregonians want. Oregonians bristle at strong leadership -- Portland has rejected a strong-mayor system multiple times. And legislators, part-time and uncommitted to change or even hard work, reflect their electorate.

...Portland is one of America's top 25 markets, but only one Fortune 500 company is based here. There's no major, high-quality university, unemployment consistently runs near the top of the nation's worst states -- such as Mississippi and West Virginia -- and child abuse is among the worst, likely because of minimal employment opportunities. Even so, we strive to protect our 19th-century agrarian economic culture by prohibiting growth and development.

So let's just admit that economic, education and social mediocrity is what we want and quit whining when we don't measure up. I don't want to hear about the next "New York-y" restaurant opening in the Pearl. Oregon is not even a qualified "wannabe."

We are not NYC -- not anything like it. We work our eight hours (maybe) a day, abandon the city on summer Friday afternoons, protect our greenspaces as if they were holy shrines, dig 'shrooms from under cow plops, eat dinner early and abandon downtown by 10 p.m. For some reason we fail to have a budget to put (or keep) criminals in jail, but we can open up skateboard parks all over town. It's what we want.

Oregonian readers react:

BRENT POTTENGER, 48, Southeast Portland, sales representative - John Barrows has it partially right. We are mediocre in Oregon, but the majority of us do care. I've lived in Portland for over 40 years. It's a naturally beautiful place to live, but I'm thinking about moving. I don't feel I'm getting anything out of my government for the money, and the economy looks like it's ready to further deteriorate. If you haven't already guessed, I'm middle class and tired of a mediocre state and local government. There are a lot of people like me. Who is representing us?

...STANLEY LONEY, 80, Milwaukie, retired sales representative - ....It is so true it is scary. Here is a state controlled by a total lack of leadership and almost total welfare and huge taxes.

...JOHN EMANUELSON, 69, Corvallis, retired recruiter - My wife and I moved to Corvallis almost four years ago, and at first we thought it charming and quaint. But the lack of up-to-date stores and poor service became clear very quickly.
I have an interest in sharing my Christian religion with others, using a church as a platform. But I haven't found a church or a pastor who shares my interest. The pastors I've attempted to work with have no focus, no plan and provide no leadership! It's not coincidental that Oregon leads the nation in lowest church attendance. So, we're giving up. We're moving to Phoenix in early November. We intend to join a large church that's actually breathing.

...PAUL KELLER, 54, Rhododendron, writer and editor - Remember, the Rajneeshees didn't understand or like us much either. Pity. If this beaver-bashing, frustrated developer really loves and misses the thrills and spills of the rat race so much, I've got a one-word suggestion for him: Seattle.

True, Paul, the economy's doing pretty well up here, so - yep - I guess we're basically heartless, soul-bereft capitalists toiling in the gears of the machine.

But Seattle's political leadership is MIA, too.

TO COMMENT: The regular comment feature is not in operation now. However, you can e-mail me your comments on this post, at the address accessed under "Contact," at the top of my "Main" page. I'll add them, here.

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at August 23, 2005 02:44 PM