Demosophia

The Pugnacious Small Mindedness of Howard Dean

Mark Steyn holds forth elequently on the selective passion of the Deanites and their fearless leader here (Tip: Sullivan.) Key graf:

Because all the big ideas failed, culminating in 1989 in Eastern Europe with the comprehensive failure of the biggest idea of all, the left retreated to all the small ideas: in a phrase, bike paths. That's what Bill Clinton meant when he said the era of big government was over; instead, he'd be ushering in the era of lots and lots of itsy bits of small government that, when you tote 'em up, works out even more expensive than the era of big government. That's what Howard Dean represents--the passion of the Bike-Path Left.

My term for this is "little democracy," as distinguished from the "Big Democracy" advocated by the Neocons and the Bush Administration.

It's as though these folks are chronically compelled to look through the wrong end of the policy telescope, which has a certain novelty, I guess. But just for the record, the really impassioned cyclists are opposed to bike paths, viewing them as wasteful and even dangerous.

The Effective Cycling advocates, led by cycling guru John Forester, see bike paths as more dangerous for both cyclists and motorists than cycling in the street, because bike paths invariably cross roadways putting cyclists in a position where they're unable to avoid doing things that surprise motorists. And these surprises create accidents. In addition, collisions between cyclists and pedestrians are rather frequent on bike paths, and while rarely fatal they often result in significant injury. There is, in fact, some pretty good data to back this position up.[1] So Howard's passion about bike paths doesn't even really conform to the more impassioned policy positions within his own little democracy crowd. It's just a relatively safe compromise position, taken in order to cultivate the environmental and "quality of life" vote.

What Dean is into is passionate ineffectiveness and relatively uninformed judgment. It's a strategy that may have worked for Clinton during a time of peace... but it's a losing proposition during wartime.

[1] As a long time cyclist myself, I think Forester's counterintuitive approach is probably correct, although I hasten to add that I don't regard it as a big idea. And if we are going to build bike paths, some careful and rather atypical attention to design, especially at intersections, is in order.

Posted by Demosophist at December 17, 2003 03:10 PM | TrackBack