President Obama said some very interesting things about infrastructure in response to a question at the town hall meeting in Ft. Myers Florida yesterday. After eight years of blithering incoherence it was a bit shocking:
We saw what happened in Minneapolis where a bridge collapsed and resulted in tragedy. Not only do we need to rebuild our roads, our bridges, our ports, our levies, our dams, but we also have to plan for the future. This is the same example of turning crisis into opportunity.
The stimulus bill and his approach in general are not just about jobs, not just about staying afloat, it's about investment in the future.
But it's more than that. This is not a time for panic, or gloom and doom, or holing up in your bunker. It is not a time for feeling helpless and hopeless. It is a time to look forward, to roll up our sleeves and rebuild this country. The grim times now are also a time for renewal.
He goes on:
We were always willing to invest in the future. Governor Crist mentioned Abraham Lincoln. In the middle of the Civil War, in the midst of all this danger and peril, what did he do? He helped move the intercontinental railroad. He helped start land grant colleges. He understood that even when you’re in the middle of crisis, you’ve got to keep your eye on the future. So transportation is not just fixing our old transportation systems but its also imaging new transportation systems.
There are a couple of interesting points here. First is the focus on the future: we cannot be paralyzed by the now, and we cannot just keep investing in the old. Times have changed, the world has changed, technology has changed, we must invest in the future. Even, perhaps especially, in times of crisis.
Second, why were so many land grant colleges founded in the mid 19th century? The Republican party at its inception was the party of reform, of the progressives; it was the Democratic party that symbolized inertia, the establishment, and conservatism. Democrats were not supportive of new state funded colleges, but they also chose to split themselves at this time, with many Democratic states going so far as to secede from the Union. Republicans did not let the opportunity pass. Things have changed a bit since then, and while today's Republicans are not suggesting secession they are doing their best to marginalize themselves as well as the few moderates left in their party. We cannot let this moment pass.
That’s why I’d like to see high speed rail where it can be constructed. That’s why I would like to invest in mass transit because potentially that’s energy efficient and I think people are a lot more open now to thinking regionally in terms of how we plan our transportation infrastructure. The days where we’re just building sprawl forever, those days are over. I think that Republicans, Democrats, everybody recognizes that that’s not a smart way to build communities. So we should be using this money to help spur this kind of innovative thinking when it comes to transportation. That will make a big difference.
"Those days are over". I feared that Obama did not quite get that our transportation infrastructure is suitable for the last half of the last century, and that we need something different for the first half of this century; I feared that he would be content to push CAFE standards and promote hybrid cars; I am happy to learn that I was wrong. It is not just about maintaining the unsustainable, only more efficiently, it is about renewing our approach to how we live and work.
But he cannot do this alone. Mass transit does not play a prominent part in this stimulus bill -- in fact it got cut. But this type of investment is a long-term one, requiring not just technical planning but also political and social spadework, so perhaps it is better to devote a real transportation bill to it. That means that we must show support for it, that means that we need to pressure our Senators and Representatives and local officials for it.
This is a time of crisis, where perhaps it is all we can do to tread water. But it is also a time to get energized, to get involved. We spent collectively an immense amount of time and energy (and money) to get Obama elected -- but election is just the beginning. This is no time to say "OK, I've done my bit". Now is the time for "turning crisis into opportunity".