That Used to Be Us_ How America Fell Behind in thted and How We Can Come Back - Friedman, Thomas L. & Mandelbaum, Michael [3]
A simple comparison made a startling point: It took China’s Teda Construction Group thirty-two weeks to build a world-class convention center from the ground up—including giant escalators in every corner—and it was taking the Washington Metro crew twenty-four weeks to repair two tiny escalators of twenty-one steps each. We searched a little further and found that WTOP, a local news radio station, had interviewed the Metro interim general manager, Richard Sarles, on July 20, 2010. Sure, these escalators are old, he said, but “they have not been kept in a state of good repair. We’re behind the curve on that, so we have to catch up … Just last week, smoke began pouring out of the escalators at the Dupont Circle station during rush hour.”
On November 14, 2010, The Washington Post ran a letter to the editor from Mark Thompson of Kensington, Maryland, who wrote:
I have noted with interest your reporting on the $225,000 study that Metro hired Vertical Transportation Excellence to conduct into the sorry state of the system’s escalators and elevators … I am sure that the study has merit. But as someone who has ridden Metro for more than 30 years, I can think of an easier way to assess the health of the escalators. For decades they ran silently and efficiently. But over the past several years—when the escalators are running—aging or ill-fitting parts have generated horrific noises that sound to me like a Tyrannosaurus Rex trapped in a tar pit screeching its dying screams.
The quote we found most disturbing, though, came from a Maryland Community News story about the long lines at rush hour caused by the seemingly endless Metro repairs: “‘My impression, standing on line there, is people have sort of gotten used to it,’ said Benjamin Ross, who lives in Bethesda and commutes every day from the downtown station.”
The National Watercooler
People have sort of gotten used to it. Indeed, that sense of resignation, that sense that, well, this is just how things are in America today, that sense that America’s best days are behind it and China’s best days are ahead of it, have become the subject of watercooler, dinner-party, grocery-line, and classroom conversations all across America today. We hear the doubts from children, who haven’t been to China. Tom took part in the September 2010 Council of Educational Facility Planners International (CEFPI) meeting in San Jose, California. As part of the program, there was a “School of the Future Design Competition,” which called for junior high school students to design their own ideal green school. He met with the finalists on the last morning of the convention, and they talked about global trends. At one point, Tom asked them what they thought about China. A young blond-haired junior high school student, Isabelle Foster, from Old Lyme Middle School in Connecticut, remarked, “It seems like they have more ambition and will than we do.” Tom asked her, “Where did you get that thought?” She couldn’t really explain it, she said. She had never visited China. But it was just how she felt. It’s in the air.
We heard the doubts about America from Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, in his angry reaction after the National Football League postponed for two days a game scheduled in Philadelphia between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Minnesota Vikings—because of a severe snowstorm. The NFL ordered the games postponed because it didn’t want fans driving on icy, snow-covered roads. But Rendell saw it as an indicator of something more troubling—that Americans had gone soft. “It goes against everything that football is all about,” Rendell said in an interview with the sports radio station 97.5 The Fanatic in Philadelphia (December 27, 2010). “We’ve become a nation of wusses. The Chinese are kicking our