Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Nation-Building

Thomas Friedman has a compelling column in today's New York Times.

Clips:

The difference is starting to show. Just compare arriving at La Guardia’s dumpy terminal in New York City and driving through the crumbling infrastructure into Manhattan with arriving at Shanghai’s sleek airport and taking the 220-mile-per-hour magnetic levitation train, which uses electromagnetic propulsion instead of steel wheels and tracks, to get to town in a blink.

Then ask yourself: Who is living in the third world country?

Yes, if you drive an hour out of Beijing, you meet the vast dirt-poor third world of China. But here’s what’s new: The rich parts of China, the modern parts of Beijing or Shanghai or Dalian, are now more state of the art than rich America. The buildings are architecturally more interesting, the wireless networks more sophisticated, the roads and trains more efficient and nicer. And, I repeat, they did not get all this by discovering oil. They got it by digging inside themselves.

...

Obama got this far because many voters projected onto him that he could be the leader of an American renewal. They know we need nation-building at home now — not in Iraq, not in Afghanistan, not in Georgia, but in America. Obama cannot lose that theme.

He cannot let Republicans make this election about who is tough enough to stand up to Russia or bin Laden. It has to be about who is strong enough, focused enough, creative enough and unifying enough to get Americans to rebuild America. The next president can have all the foreign affairs experience in the world, but it will be useless, utterly useless, if we, as a country, are weak.

Obama is more right than he knows when he proclaims that this is “our” moment, this is “our” time. But it is our time to get back to work on the only home we have, our time for nation-building in America. I never want to tell my girls — and I’m sure Obama feels the same about his — that they have to go to China to see the future.

2 comments:

Paul and Heidi Adomshick said...

A utopian vision of China as seen through rose-colored glasses, but actually built on the enslaved backs of 1 billion people is not a utopia we should have any desire to emulate, no matter how cutting-edge it may seem.

Paul Snatchko said...

True on China.

But, what Friedman is saying about America's infrastructure is on the mark. It needs substantial investment. America needs to bring the best technologies to its transportation systems -- particularly high speed rail.

This morning, I took a flight out of JFK Airport. From Union Square in Manhattan, it took me three different trains to get there via public transportation (L train to the A train to AirTran).

The total travel time was one hour, 40 minutes (which included a long wait for the A train on a dingy platform). (Cost was $7 -- $2 for the subway and $5 for AirTran.)

For a great city like NYC, getting from the urban center to its largest airport via public transport should be a much more consumer-friendly experience.

And, the other great city close to my heart -- Pittsburgh -- doesn't even have a rail connection between its urban center and its airport. In 2008. Unbelievable.