How Trump can win on infrastructure
Original article can be found at The Denver Post
Originally published on November 19, 2016 By Patty Limerick
After the presidential election of 2016, many good souls have declared that the building of bridges now registers as our most urgent national priority.
Depending on the kind of bridges you have in mind, President-elect Donald Trump agrees.
Russell Berman recently wrote in The Atlantic that “the very first specific promise Trump made upon claiming the presidency was to follow through on the one issue that united him and Hillary Clinton — and divided Republicans in Washington: infrastructure.”
ADVERTISING
inRead invented by Teads
If Trump aspires to be a “winner” in this arena, he will have to come to terms with a troubling reality. Addressing the problems that beset the material kind of infrastructure — the networks of bridges, roads, water systems, energy supply chains, and channels for information — will require a comparable effort to rebuild the collapsed national systems of communication and trust.
Here, laid out premise by premise, is the line of reflection I have followed to convince myself to see as a zone of hope.
1. The condition of American infrastructure poses a very big threat to the nation — partly because its durability is under siege from everything from rain to rust, and partly because so many of its pieces and parts are outmoded relics, ill-suited to the 21st century.
2. An aura of boredom and tedium cloaks the whole subject, making it impossible to undertake a coordinated campaign to maintain and enhance the nation’s infrastructure.
3. Since every remark made by Trump rockets to national attention, his awareness of the importance of infrastructure presents a remarkable chance to dispel the indifference and ennui that usually surround the subject.
4. Meaningful work on infrastructure cannot proceed without answers to three questions that no individual or single interest group can answer unilaterally: a) How will we pay for the necessary labor and supplies? b) How will we choose among different scenarios of, for instance, energy production and use, in order to determine the aims and goals that the infrastructure will serve? And c) How will we allocate the benefits and burdens of reliable infrastructure in a way that responds to the inequalities of social class, and to the disparities between opportunity in rural, urban and suburban locales?
5. These questions cannot even be raised — much less considered and answered — unless we have a president with the willingness and the capability to initiate and participate in reasoned and temperate discussions. Without that capability, both the president-elect and the whole nation are fated to be “losers.”
A few days ago, providence arranged for me to eavesdrop on a conversation between two people who were sharing their post-election dismay, and unknowingly volunteering as my focus group for this column.
“So the Republicans are going to make a big thing about repairing the infrastructure,” one person said, so audibly that no purposeful snooping was required on my part. “Of course,” she continued, “they’ll try to take all the credit.”
I think I could live with that.
Those seven words rocketed into my mind as a response to what I had overheard.
In the judgment of many of my fellow citizens in late 2016, that response will present itself as a failure of integrity, an intolerable compromise, and a spineless concession.
Not sure of what else to hope for, I am betting on the bridges.