Quitting on your constituents: Jay Inslee does a Sarah Palin

The U.S. House of Representatives is due to spend just 109 days doing the public's business in Washington, D.C. this year. But even a schedule drawn up to grease reelection campaigns and Speaker John Boehner's golf game proved too onerous for Jay Inslee's political ambitions.

Inslee is quitting Congress in a week's time: The Democratic gubernatorial candidate is going out as Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin did in 2009, seeking greener pastures and leaving an important office entrusted to him by the voters.

Of course, there are differences. Inslee is seeking higher office while Palin was cashing in on a high profile. But Palin was able to hand over the reins to Alaska's Lt. Governor Sean Parnell. By dint of Inslee's timing, 600,000 people will for months have no representation in the "Peoples' House" of Congress.

Inslee is leaving one job in a lurch to seek another. He can look across the Pacific for a successful precedent. Hawaii's Democratic Rep. Neil Abercrombie left the House in 2010 to campaign for the statehouse, and today is governor of America's 50th state.

The Democrats' interest groups seem to be fine with this. Here's one scribe who isn't.

Voters of Washington's 1st District hired Inslee to do a job, and showed their trust by reelecting him six times. Colleagues in Congress put him on the key House Energy and Commerce Committee. Inslee sought another term in 2010 when it was a good bet Gov. Chris Gregoire would soon announce her retirement.

Inslee has been a constructive congressman. He defined his central task as promoting new energy sources, using a "clean" energy economy to curb global warming and propel America's growth through the 21st Century. Without U.S. action, China and Europe will propel themselves past us in applying new technologies.

Inslee fought to get Boeing the $35 billion contract for the new Air Force refueling tanker. Lately, he has stood on the front lines of resistance to House Republicans' efforts to roll back what were once the b! ipartisa n foundations of environmental protection in America, laws such as the Clean Air Act and Endangered Species Act.

Losing his seat is no small deal, although environmental groups -- increasingly satraps of the Democratic Party -- have been curiously silent on Inslee's decision to quit Congress.

The Land and Water Conservation Fund survived last year on a 216-213 vote in the House. If Inslee had not been on the floor, as defender and advocate, would GOP colleague Rep. Dave Reichert have had the cojones to defy Republican leaders and cast a tie-breaking vote to save something that has saved thousands of acres in Washington?

As Eli Sanders perceptively noted, reporting Inslee's resignation for The Stranger, quitting Congress served as kind of a relaunch. The Inslee campaign has sputtered since his announcement last June.

Back then, Inslee proposed that state pension fund money be invested in startup companies -- a risky proposition from which he was quickly disabused by State Treasurer Jim McIntire. Republican Attorney General Rob McKenna has shown surer footing, especially in deciding to anchor his campaign to restoring state support for education from pre-school to graduate school.

In nine months of campaigning, Inslee has yet to offer an agenda for the state's K-12 schools and its starved four-year colleges. Campaign audiences get treated to anecdotes about over-achieving Bridgeport High School in eastern Washington, or whatever school Inslee has just visited.

As to substance and direction for the state, however, a famous Wendy's hamburger slogan cames to mind: "Where's the beef?" Instead, Inslee has gone heavy on Democratic bogeymen.

We've heard accusations that McKenna will be a carbon copy of Wisconsin's union-busting Gov. Scott Walker. "I think it is time to have somebody else running the state than Tim Eyman," Inslee told Washington Conservation Voters last fall. Inslee took liberties with Revelations in describing as "the Three Horses of the Apocalypse" Bush ! strategi st Karl Rove, initiative sponsor Eyman and the billionaire Koch brothers.

McKenna was, as a state official, blocked from raising campaign cash with the Legislature in session. He took in $260,000 in just three days last week after the regular session came to an end. The cash-heavy Republican Governors Association has yet to weigh in for McKenna, as surely it will.

The McKenna campaign has been getting a buzz. He's been ahead in the polls, except for a couple surveys suspect for their Democratic ties. He's also doing outreach. Invites to confer with McKenna have gone out to usually Democratic folks in fields like land use. The Republican's program to restore support for higher ed has impressed some liberal college faculty.

Perhaps it does make political sense for Inslee to be here all the time and, in his words, to go everywhere. He obviously needs to get a surer grasp of state issues. Beyond that, Democrats look shopworn, negative and interest beholden after holding the governor's office for 27 years.

Still, politics is more than self-interest. It is duty and responsibility. Inslee is abandoning a seat in the U.S. Congress. It's a platform from which people sent from this Washington have done much public good, and fought private greed, for the past half-century.