Feds to the Rescue

Only a handful of current affairs columnists bother to look at history for solutions to today’s problems. One of these rare analysts is Amity Shlaes, a senior fellow in economic history at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Shlaes this week examined the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in the context of the historical record. Noting the President’s tour of devastated New Jersey coastal towns, she said:

Federal rescue is the American Way. Being there starts with helping to clear the flooded metropolitan-area tunnels between New Jersey and New York. But the concept extends to bridges, roads and all the other infrastructure challenges up and down the Atlantic coast after Hurricane Sandy. Such rescue seems like a no-brainer during crises. Yet the misty deification of Washington as exclusive rescuer isn’t necessarily warranted. In fact, the U.S. suffers from a collective and politically induced amnesia that obscures the reality: There are many American ways to build infrastructure and manage it in emergencies. In the past, state and regional governments often managed disasters. Even businesses ran big domestic rescues.

She cited the Holland Tunnel as an example. About a hundred years ago, New York City faced a “coal famine” caused by an ice jam in the lower Hudson River. The shortage gave an engineer named Clifford Milburn Holland the idea of building a ventilated tunnel under the river.

While the Holland Vehicular Tunnel project, begun in 1920 and completed in 1927, had its own share of emergencies, Shlaes noted that it was an endeavor undertaken by local authorities – specifically the states of New York and New Jersey – and not the federal government.

But all that took place early in the 20th century. Not many are still around who recall those days.

Shlaes observed:

It’s important, though, to remember that the only reason voters or politicians place so much faith in Washington is that they can scarcely remember a time when the federal government wasn’t the rescuer. And that doesn’t mean the past never happened, even in the Holland Tunnel.