As today’s issue of the Chieftain was being readied for press, we couldn’t be privy to Kate Brown’s upcoming choice of personal attire for her swearing-in to Oregon’s now-musical chairs governor’s seat, a ceremony scheduled for Wednesday morning on the House floor in Salem. If we could have offered her one simple piece of easy-to-follow advice, though, it would have been this: Don’t wear blue jeans.

The dense compaction of recent tumultuous events makes it feel longer, but only about a month has passed since John Kitzhaber stood and staidly repeated his gubernatorial oath for a groundbreaking fourth time, even as the very ground beneath his own political feet was also beginning to give way. Clad in a respectful tie and blazer but also in what a news report in the Oregonian described as his “signature” blue jeans, the fourth-time governor later delivered an inaugural speech dwelling upon how tough it is for so many hard-working Oregonians to gain any traction in their material lives.

He didn’t bother to mention that a less arduous path for upward mobility, accessible to only a select few, directly reaches the innermost sanctum of power, where, among the other very well connected, rules don’t necessarily apply.

And about those blue jeans: They were so emblematic of our once-gracefully aging, laid-back guv, a visual statement of casualness as virtue.

Being casual is one thing, but playing it too fast and loose in matters of public trust is quite another. It’s a grave mistake to casually dissolve barriers that we’ve erected in the interest of our stodgy ethics.

One day soon, Governor Kate Brown might wish that she could let down her guard and convey, even if only for a moment, a less-than-taut attitude toward her public duties. She can’t afford to, though, because the last governor has already worn holes in that style. —RCR