I rarely see a John Carlson column I can agree with, but the September 16 one had some good things to say. John points out that local sports teams are doing well after replacing old leadership that wasn’t working with new people and new ideas, and draws a good analogy with politics. He is merely mistaken in the direction he points.

We replaced Republican control of the House, Senate and White House when it became clear things weren’t working. Recession in 2001, a second and worse starting in 2008, bad aim in the misnamed “war on terror” (aim for a terrorist and nab the country of Iraq), loss of personal freedoms, deepening debt – the partial list of failures is depressing.

Change for an entire country take longer than a sports

team, but the change appears to have an effect. Nationwide job loss has almost stopped and most indicators show the economy bottoming out, headed for a weak but real recovery when it was likely to be so much worse. Much more needs to be done, but we’re on our way.

John conveniently ignores all this and points to the King County

executive as needing replacement, implying the very economic problems cited above are somehow the fault of county government. Even were this so John, Ron Sims is no longer in office. And regardless of the need for new management, raw recruits with no experience are not sent to manage the head office in sports or anywhere else.

Susan Hutchison shows no special aptitude for the job.

She has offered nothing substantive regarding changes or strengths in county government, consistent with a candidate relying on name familiarity from previous years as a newscaster. Her membership on the board of directors of the Discovery Institute (long-time advocates of various ‘creation science’ schemes to replace biology in schools and author of the so-called ‘wedge document’ delineating a deliberate plan

to do so) calls into question her ability to separate fact from

comfortable fiction, as well as apparent approval for less than honest debate. The only positive things I can say about her is that she has come out officially in support of Referendum 71 and opposes Initiative 1033.

Susan may be a pretty face, but we need real leadership in the county. An election between Ms. Hutchison and Dow Constantine is no contest at all; Dow is the only qualified candidate on the ballot.

Randy Grein, Bellevue