Defining What They're Not

1. “Our” Commander-In-Chief

You’ll often hear the President referred to as ‘our commander-in-chief’ by his supporters. But Gary Wills reminds us that “the president is not ‘our’ commander in chief. He certainly is not mine. I am not in the Army.” If you’re wondering why the Constitution draws a bright line between military discipline and civic discourse, ask a Tibetan or Burmese how totalitarianism is working out for them.

As for a test, consider how a candidate might react to this real-life scenario: On the morning of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush’s chief of staff whispered into his ear that "a second plane [has] hit the second tower. America is under attack." Unsure or unable to act, the President sat frozen for almost seven minutes. With stunning clarity, we saw the weight of our nation instantly placed on the shoulders of our leader. But deprived of the opportunity to be prepped, handled and choreographed, the man we had elected President was revealed to be unequal to the task. Perhaps this time, the voters will pay a bit more heed to a candidate’s depth, composure, and thoughtfulness. And a bit less on how good he looks in a flight suit.

2. A Pundit

From the Sanskrit word pandita, meaning a learned man or teacher, the word’s English definition has evolved into a pejorative description of someone who is paid to opine through the mass media. But our modern definition does injustice to the word’s original meaning, so I suggest that anyone:

1) Whose statements are calculated to engage the passions of his audience, rather than their ability to reason;

2) Who continues to pontificate on that which his previous conclusions have been repeatedly and conclusively been proven wrong;

3) Who draws an imaginary line, places his opponents on the opposite side, and proceeds to find absolutely no common ground with them;

4) Whose views on any given topic can be predicted before he opens his mouth;

isn’t a pundit.

Leaving St. Louis

I’m back after a visit to St. Louis, and I can report to my fellow New Yorkers that the stereotype is true: we’re far more obnoxious and rude bunch than our Middle America cousins. Strangers smile and say hello and cashiers say thank you. “It’s a great city,” says my host. “But it’s just too far from anywhere else.”

According to Google Maps, St. Louis is 300 miles from Chicago. You could fly, but God forbid you’re carrying a 4oz bottle of shampoo. You’ll also need to tack on 2-3 hours for security and airport transfers, and then pray for good flying weather. The drive would take 5 hours in no traffic. So I guess my friend’s right—the hassle of traveling does make Chicago seem a world away.

Now consider Amtrak’s run between Chicago and St. Louis (284 miles), which is scheduled for 5 hours and 40 minutes. The train runs on delay-prone tracks owned by freight lines, with only four departures per day. Amtrak does run what they call a high speed service that trundles the 450 miles between DC and Boston in 6 hours and 30 minutes. Only in this heavily congested corridor does Amtrak offer a viable (but still mediocre) product. Everywhere else, it’s not just an impractical option—it’s a silly one.

Contrast this with:

- A Frenchman who boards a train in Paris, and finds himself on the German border at Strasbourg (300 miles away) in 2 hours and 20 minutes. That will drop to 1 hour 50 minutes when construction is complete in 2014.

-A Japanese who can travel from Tokyo to Osaka (320 miles) in 2 hours and 25 minutes.

-An Argentine, who will be able to travel the 441 miles between Buenos Aires and Cordoba (the same distance between Boston and DC) in just 3 hours when the Americas’ first high-speed link opens in 2011.

Building the Paris-Strasbourg link will cost €4 billion, which works out to about 3 weeks of spending on the Iraq War. A 2-track high speed rail line operates at an almost limitless scale—the Tokyo-Osaka link carries 375,000 passengers per day. Compare that to the busiest section of the New Jersey Turnpike: 14 lanes carrying 200,000 vehicles per day. Trains can be scheduled so reliably that the Madrid-Seville link offers a full refund if the train is more than 5 minutes late.

For those who still view an option that is cheaper, faster, more reliable and land-efficient suspiciously because the notion of traveling in style and comfort sounds vaguely French, consider how it might be tailored to fit America’s love of the car. Since many more of us live in the suburbs, we could build en-route suburban stations that would offer thousands of parking spaces. Or offer car-carrying overnight trains for families traveling longer distances. How about a train that takes an hour to travel the 200 miles from a secondary city like Illinois’ capital of Springfield directly to O’Hare?

Our Interstate highway system was state-of-the-art civil engineering in the 1950s. But now, there’s more than 300 million of us, our airports and roads are congested, and gas is nearing $4/gallon. Fact: we’ve fallen behind the rest of the world in transporting ourselves. And America’s not as big as we think—here’s a sample of four city pairs that fall within high-speed rail’s sweet spot of 200 to 500 mile trips:

- Boston-New York-Washington: 454 miles
- Los Angeles-San Francisco: 382 miles
- Dallas-Houston: 239 miles
- Chicago-Detroit: 283 miles

So here’s my advice to our Presidential candidates: stop talking about “fixing America’s infrastructure.” Boring, doesn’t mean a thing to John Q. Public. Instead, ask those swing voters in Missouri whether they’d like to park their car, walk onto a platform, and board a train that leaves exactly on time and gets them to get to Chicago in 90 minutes. On board, they can spend each second relaxing in a seat sized for an adult, sleeping or working. And they’ll step off the train in Chicago’s city center.

Or we can keep walking barefoot through security.

Hope's Got Nothing To Do With It

You know you’re getting older when the phrase “how great things used to be” starts creeping into your conversation. Remember when Saturday Night Live used to do political satire that didn’t look like it was written by a ten year-old? When SUV-idling neighborhood moms didn’t gather at the school bus stop like overprotective hens? When the pitcher who threw a complete game was just doing his job?

So went my confidence in the American voter, which hit its nadir in 2004. How could 51% re-elect a man who blundered us into war and was still incapable of speaking in complete sentences? American Idol and America blurred together, and I found myself flipping between Sanjaya and Dubya, unable to tell the difference. So last December, I asked a friend how he was planning to vote in the upcoming election. “I don’t give a shit about that stuff,” he laughed. Was America in an irrecoverable tailspin, caught in the jetwash of its own indifference?

But it looks like I brought out the rocking chair and Country Time lemonade too soon, as voters have turned out in record numbers over the past two months. Europeans who reflexively sneer at our privately-financed, drawn-out election cycles can’t help but admire the populist mechanisms of how American political parties ask the grassroots to choose their leaders. And it must’ve been a blue-ink-finger moment for the liberal in Idaho, or the conservative in Massachusetts, who both got a chance to cast their first meaningful national vote in decades.

My friend’s words still troubled me—after all, how could someone who enjoyed access to a great public education and holds a lucrative Wall Street job not care about who led the country? But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that his attitude was testament to the strength of a system that remains transparent while generating so much plenty. No doubt he’d care if there was no school or job in the first place.

After seven years of a President who probably blames his high dry-cleaning bills on 9/11, Americans have been treated to an object lesson as to what happens when too many of us choose apathy. And the stampede to the polls demonstrates that we still trust the system to spit out someone better this time around. Some might call it naïveté, but isn’t it nice to know that “Liberty” isn’t just a word stamped on our quarters?

Perhaps there’s hope for us yet.



Editor’s Note: “Jetwash of our own indifference.” That’s just great writing.