Hopeless Stasis
By Mitch Berg
After running a campaign that harped on “vision”, Obama’s administration desperately lacks it:
President Barack Obama is about as visionary as the guy who invented Dippin’ Dots, Ice Cream of the Future. Far from sketching out a truly forward-looking set of policies for the 21st century, as his supporters had hoped, Obama is instead serving up cryogenically tasteless and headache-inducing morsels from years gone by.On issue after issue, Obama has made it clear that instead of blasting past “the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long,” (as he promised in his inaugural address), he’s moving full speed ahead toward policy prescriptions that already had less fizz than a case of Billy Beer back when Jimmy Carter was urging us all to wear sweaters and turn down our thermostats. Instead of thinking outside the box, Obama is nailing it shut from the inside.
My theory – and I’ll stand by it – is that much of Obama’s electorate is too young or too complacent about politics to know that “different from Bush” isn’t really “different” in the great scheme of things.
Obama’s big schtick so far seems to be counting on populist Macguffins both vague (“hope and change”) and specific (“green jobs”, “raising taxes on the wealthy”, “high speed trains”) for his actual policy substance:
Consider the president’s recent “major” speech about transportation, yet another Castro-like exhortation in which Obama boldly rejected the failed policies of the past in favor of the failed policies of the future.
“Our highways are clogged with traffic,” he noted, before unveiling his big fix: Shiny new trains that go almost twice as fast as cars. Forget that, as urban historian Joel Garreau has long documented, our country has been decentralizing its living and working patterns for decades now, migrating from virtually all urban centers (except maybe for booming Washington, D.C.) to relatively low-density suburbs. In a big, spread-out country where individualized service at the coffee stand, on cable TV, and in your computer is the new normal, our chief visionary officer is talking about a one-size-fits-all solution that will surely bomb even bigger than NBC’s Supertrain.
It’s an axiom of economics that “making someone pay more or less for a good or service than they would on their own causes grievous unexpected consequences”. I suspect that the same holds true for trying to chivvy, shame or coerce people into living where they ordinarily won’t would work about the same.
May 11th, 2009 at 10:19 am
Light rail makes a lot of sense; it works well in many urban and suburban areas in conjunction with other mass transit. We are behind the curve in developing better transit systems, not just same old same old expansions on the interstate system promoted by Ike back in the days of the dinosaurs. Other countries are ahead of us and we would do well to follow their example.
May 11th, 2009 at 10:20 am
I’m the only person I know who actually liked SuperTrain. But as a 9 year old kid, I was all about the train, not the plot or characters.
May 11th, 2009 at 10:22 am
Light rail makes a lot of sense; it works well in many urban and suburban areas in conjunction with other mass transit.
Name one. Then let’s add a degree of difficulty: name one where it isn’t heavily subsidized.
May 11th, 2009 at 10:37 am
it works well in many urban and suburban areas in conjunction with other mass transit.
Sure it works “well”, if you overlook the 60-75% public subsidy that every single system (with the exception of NYC) in this country needs, and the far lower capacities than even a 2 lane freeway has. But hey, they’re cool and hip and sorta quiet and “green”, so that’s all that matters.
Again, I’ll repeat my story about light rail. In the early 90s when I was in college at the U of MN, I took a class called “The Geography of Maps”. The professor proceeded to give a 45 minute lecture using only maps, to show why light rail would never be a financially sound possibility in the Twin Cities. It all has to do with the geographical limitations of the area, of which there are none. There are no mountains or water or anything blocking further outgrowth like there are in NYC, L.A., and Chicago. People are artificially packed in, in those cities, so light rail makes more sense. Here, people can move farther out (MUSA lines not withstanding), so rail makes no financial sense at all. The Hiawatha line running at top capacity for 24 hours can only carry 1/3-1/2 of the traffic that ONE lane of 35W is capable of moving.
Trains are a horribly inefficient and inflexible way to move people. You can move a lot more people to a lot more places for a lot less money by road vehicle.
Trains are great for freight, but not so great for people.
May 11th, 2009 at 10:56 am
My theory – and I’ll stand by it – is that much of Obama’s electorate is too young or too complacent about politics to know that “different from Bush” isn’t really “different” in the great scheme of things.
Your theory strikes me as exactly right. The average Obama voter seems to have been voting for “change” without bothering to think very hard about what that “change” actually entails.
May 11th, 2009 at 11:09 am
“Light rail makes a lot of sense; it works well in many urban and suburban areas..”
Sure it does!
It kicks a llamas butt in San Francisco: “Apr 10, 2009 … People who commute on Bay Area Rapid Transit may soon be paying higher fares and seeing cutbacks in service.”
It’s da bomb in Chi-Town: “Both CTA and Metra announced service cuts, layoffs and fare increases… ”
Atlanta says, Yeah, boy!: “Faced with a 100 million shortfall, MARTA’s board of directors are expected to vote Monday on a plan…”
Philly says transit is the cheeziest!: “In real terms, Pennsylvania’s support for SEPTA has declined for the … They all are facing deficits, service cutbacks, and fare hikes….”
Portland is pumped: “While the fare hikes may foster grumbling among TriMet riders, it is important to remember that the increases are necessary not only to …”
You really have your finger on the pulse of this one DG!
May 12th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
Dog Gone has been taken to task once again. Now go lie down next to your dish.