It’s a small holiday weekend sampling, but the leaders of the contest described in the previous post are listed below. I’ve given 2 points for a first mention and 1 point for people also mentioned by readers:

- Bill Sizemore (anti-tax, anti-government initiatives), 10
- Bill Moshofsky (Oregonians in Action,
Measure 37), 6
- John Kitzhaber (Oregon Health Plan, salmon), 5
- Don McIntyre (anti-tax, anti-government initiatives, 4
- David Hunnicut (Oregonians in Action, Measure 37), 3
- John d’Lorenzo (for being d’Lorenzo), 2
- Karen Minnis (House GOP agenda), 2
- Oregon ex-House Speaker Larry Campbell (for introducing harsh partisan politics to legislature), 2
- Phil Keisling (vote by mail), 2
- Chuck Adams, 2
- Mike Bellotti (for Ducks football), 2
- William S. Wren (father of OR initiative and referendum, abused so skillfully by folks out to gut government, 2
- Barbara Coombs Lee (Death with dignity), 1
- Vicki Ervin (vote by mail), 1
- John Buchanan (Portland Art Museum) 1
- Neil Goldschmidt (Weyerhaeuser hostile takeover of Willamette Industries, role in PGE future, OSHU tram), 1
- Tim Nesbitt (for fighting Sizemore)
- Brewmeisters Karl Ockert, Craig Nicholls and John Harris, 1
- Derrick Foxworth (first place, erotic poetry division), 1

THE CONTEST RUNS UNTIL NOON, SATURDAY, JULY 8. Record you vote in a comment to this post.

This is an exercise to stimulate thought about the characteristics of public leadership, for good or ill, as we approach the November elections.

Who, in your opinion, has had the most impact on Oregon since 1996? John Kitzhaber, the governor who called for the Columbia River dams to come down to save the salmon? Bill Moshofsky, the patron saint of Oregonians in Action, life-long “property rights” advocate and key supporter of Measure 37? Phil Keisling, inventor of all-mail elections and promoter of open primary elections? Peter Kohler, president of that medical and scientific colossus, OHSU? Andy Kerr, champion of ancient forests? Barbara Roberts, Oregon’s first and only women governor? Ed Jensen of the old US Bank, key financial supporter of Self Enhancement, Inc., the NE Portland program for youth at risk? Phil Knight? Jimmy DePreist, formally of the Oregon Symphony? Don McIntyre, scourge of taxes? Bill Sizemore?

Give some thought to the magnitude of events that have occurred in this state since 1996 and cast your vote by commenting here.

Remember, the idea is not who has done the most “good.” It’s who has had the most profound effect. My thought is that if we don’t see enough people from “our side” on the list, maybe we can give deeper thought about why this is so—and do something about it. If the reverse is true, the question becomes how can we nuture more of such leadership.

Vote now.

(Disclaimer: I retired from public live in 1993 and, thus, am ineligible—a source of consternation, I’ve sure, from those familiar with my weaknesses.)

I don’t know if Al Gore should run for president—hell, I (1) really don’t believe he wants to run; and (2) had my scrapes with him in Congress (MX missile*, et al)—but it sure is fun to watch him scare the rig grease out of Big Oil, which is in a full frenzy against him on climate change. On this issue, Gore is politically and scientifically dead on and other “major” D’s are, as of now, virtually dead silent.

Someday, a wise person will do the definitive study of the “biorhythms” of presidential politics, the Democratic Party version of which I believe Gore understands very well (see #1). When a political object is above or beyond the fray, long distance vision makes our collective hearts pound harder. Viola! A boomlet begins. Then, when the din turns the person’s head and s/he gets back in the arena, an odd thing occurs: out goes the telescope and in comes the proctoscope. And, oh my, our hero/ine looks different from there.

(With due respect to my friend Steve Novick and to Jeff Alworth of Blue Oregon), consider the Al Gore whom Alexander Cockburn (Now of CounterPunch.com) famously describeded in the 2000 book, Al Gore: A User’s Manual (book review, The Nation: “No Mirth in the Balance).”

But—Al vis à vis the 2006-2008 Hillary—you wonder what Gore’s worst critics would say. Hillary’s best move now? Maybe a Shermanesque statement.

I’m just saying…
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*Congress and the Cold War, page 272, Robert David Johnson, Cambridge University Press, 2006, (380 pages)

My, my. Mary Starrett—former black helicopter TV talk show host and shill for the gun lobby—is outing herself as a politico. This will be worth watching. Memo to the media: when Starrett accepts the rightist Oregon Constitution Party’s nomination for governor on Saturday, ask her to document her charge that Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Marxist, that the national holiday in his name is a “con job,” that King’s Southern Christian Leadership Congress (sic) had “no Christian underpinnings,” and that it was instead “substantially under control of the Communist Party.”

Here’s an “Atta Boy” for Ron Wyden, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, for his pointed questioning of General Hayden in the CIA confirmation hearing. Wyden refused to accept General Hayden’s limp explanation for misleading him, and was one of three committee Senators who voted against him. (Feingold—who keeps looking better by the day—and Byah joined him.)

The Oregonian’s David Reinhard thinks it was fine that Hayden had parsed his words in an earlier hearing about storing phone logs of Americans in a way that mislead Wyden, whose job on the intelligence committee is to perform rigorous oversight.

David Reinhard—big shirt, small hat.