Not Getting It

Politicians say the darnedest things. In their naiveté, they offer unintentionally revealing wisdom about the world in which we live.

Consider, for example, this doozy from U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee included in the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce's report on its recent leadership retreat on the subject of economic-development prospects in clean energy:

"The economy of Washington shines when there is great transition because we get technological advance better than any other state."

What's remarkable about that quote is not that Inslee uttered it-politicians have been known to spout entire volumes of meaningless verbiage-but that the quote was considered insightful enough to be considered part of developing a strategy for capitalizing on this potential market.

That quote, and the attitudes behind it, go a long way toward explaining why Washington state is in such a predicament in figuring out what its economic base will be, and why all the grand visions of wind turbines, algae-derived biofuel refineries and smart-grid controllers may not do much to get it out of that fix.

We get technological advance better than anyone else?

Oh, really? Says who?

Says us, apparently.

The scrap heap of history is littered with the carcasses of economies and regions that had the innovation game figured out-and may actually have, for a while, until someone else proved better at it.

The modern American industrial economy is largely a product of the Midwest, which, for one glorious era, created, grew and dominated dozens of industries. While it is popular to blame the fall of the midwestern economy on the shift of productive work to lower-wage locales, what actually happened was that the region stopped innovating.

Meanwhile, the American South was not content to remain an economic backwater. Japan, South Korea and, more recently, China were not content to stick to the menial and low-value work the big industrial economies didn't want. The China of today is not the China of 30 years ago. The Japan of the 1980s was not the Japan of the 1950s.

But to hear the shocked reaction in the Puget Sound region to Boeing's decision to locate the second 787 assembly line in South Carolina, you'd think the South hasn't changed or progressed in decades.

One byproduct of that decision was to reveal this region's ugly tendencies to provincialism, smugness and condescension. Ripping the veneer off those underlying Northwest character flaws could actually be beneficial if it scares the region straight.

Will it? Not if the self-deception persists that we're bound to succeed in new industries and sciences because we get the whole technology advancement thing better than anyone else. The historic record might suggest otherwise. Do we get the internet, consumer electronics and mobile communications better than, say, Silicon Valley? Do we get biotech better than Boston or San Diego? Heck, do we even get the merits of concentrating academic and corporate brainpower better than North Carolina has for decades at Research Triangle Park? And will we get the energy business better than, say, Texas, which not only has experience on the oil and gas side, but is also the nation's leading producer of wind power?

Fortunately, some get the message. Clint Wilder, contributing editor at a Portland-based research and publishing firm, is quoted in the Chamber's report thusly: "Everyone talks about being a clean tech leader. We need to aggressively compete for the companies and jobs that can just as easily go to Austin, Boston or China."

The report also summarizes the challenges: "Can Washington create that policy environment and make the public investments needed to leverage research and entrepreneurial energies in the state? And do we have the stomach to engage in that fierce competition?"

Good questions. The answers are not encouraging as long as the state continues to lead the nation in production of commodities no one is buying: hubris and arrogance.

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