Jay Inslee is at the tail end of his 9-day trade mission to Korea and Japan, which he embarked on last Friday. Inslee flew out with quite an entourage – the directors of the state Agriculture and Commerce departments, and 60 leaders from the business, education, economic development and local government communities, will accompany the “green” governor, to try and keep him from embarrassing our state. It truly does take a village to keep Jay Inslee in line.
The delegation planned to hold talks on trade and investment in the agriculture, aerospace, advanced manufacturing and technology sectors. The trip is quite ambitious, which is the primary reason why Inslee should not be leading it—there are a couple of others.
Unfortunately, few reports concerning the progress of Inslee’s trade mission have surfaced. The lack of coverage makes us grateful and skeptical – grateful because Inslee must be keeping the embarrassing activities to a minimum and skeptical because the lack of interest probably reflects poorly on the trade mission itself.
Perhaps in order to drive attention to the trade mission, reporters should ask Inslee some hard-hitting questions about his opinion on the state of international relations. A perfect place to start would be his opinion on the state of… Freedonia.
Back in the early days of his time as a U.S. Representative, Spy magazine asked Inslee for his thoughts on the state of “Freedonia,” a fictitious nation from the 1933 Marx Brothers movie, “Duck Soup.” Spy magazine staff asked, “Do you approve of what we’re doing to stop what’s going on in Freedonia?”
Inslee answered, “I have to be honest with you, I’m not familiar with that proposal. But it’s coming to the point now that a blind eye to it for the next 10 years is not the answer.”
Here’s hoping a reporter asks Inslee about Freedonia… soon. We could use the laugh.
