By Noah
Rothman
Monday,
June 12, 2023
The
collapse of an overpass on Sunday along Interstate 95 in North Philadelphia,
which disabled both sides of the roadway, cuts off a major artery in the heart
of the Northeast’s “Megalopolis.” The “remarkable devastation” Pennsylvania
governor Josh Shapiro described
will “take some number of months” to repair.
America’s
interstate highways are state property. They are not strictly the federal
government’s responsibility, but the Biden administration has not handed this
disaster off to Pennsylvania alone to manage. Transportation Secretary Pete
Buttigieg has
pledged his agency’s “full support” for the cleanup and rebuilding effort,
which “my team and I have been closely engaged on.” He insisted that he is monitoring the
event closely, that his “federal highway administrator is on the ground right
now,” and that the collapse represents a “cruel reminder” of how important
roads are.
Buttigieg’s
intervention has not inspired any indication from the political press that
Biden’s transportation secretary has something to prove, though he most
certainly does. His tenure in
this role has
been one of the more eventful
transportation administrations in recent memory, not because it was typified by the
secretary’s unique competence or his agency’s fleet-footedness. Moreover,
Buttigieg’s political aspirations transcend the office he presently occupies,
and he is often cited in
polls alongside
prominent Democrats such as Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren
as a potential future presidential candidate. The collapse of I-95 should be as
much of a “test” of Buttigieg as the aftermath of Hurricane Ian and the damage
it inflicted on Florida’s roadways was a “test” for Governor Ron DeSantis.
Nearly a
week before Ian’s landfall, in late September of last year, political observers
forecast the “challenge” the storm and its aftermath would
pose to the governor. “To a national audience that knows him mostly as a
provocateur,” a Wall Street
Journal report
observed, the storm would “test” DeSantis and challenge his characterizations
of Florida’s relative livability. In particular, NPR observed that the speed with which
“roads repaired and bridges reconnected” would either prove DeSantis’s mettle
or showcase his shortcomings. In the storm’s aftermath, some even
wondered if it
was possible to rebuild in coastal areas of the country beset by “natural
disasters intensified by the climate crisis.” Those who weren’t inclined to
surrender the coasts to the ravages of nature were at least
convinced that
DeSantis could either concentrate on rebuilding Florida or run for the White
House, but not both.
DeSantis
passed this test, and it didn’t seem particularly strenuous. A severed link
between Pine Island and Fort Myers was rebuilt in fewer than three days. The
causeway over open water that couples Sanibel Island with the Florida
mainland reopened within three weeks of Ian’s
landfall — twelve days ahead of schedule. Florida
voters registered their overwhelming satisfaction with DeSantis’s emergency
response in polling, and they ratified his performance
in November with a 20-point victory over his Democratic opponent.
As
governor, DeSantis had more direct responsibility for disaster mitigation in
his state than Buttigieg has over the delivery of relief to beleaguered
commuters in the I-95 corridor. But compared with the Florida governor’s
performance, the state and federal officials who struggle to envision a
timeline for repair work that doesn’t stretch into the fall do not inspire
confidence.
Regardless
of whether reporters deem the collapse of a section of I-95 a “test” of either
the Democratic administration in Pennsylvania or Joe Biden’s transportation
secretary, it is one. Given the estimated timeline on which I-95 users can
expect repairs to be completed, however, it is probably wise that media outlets
avoided establishing a direct contrast with Ron DeSantis’s record. It doesn’t
seem like it will be a favorable one.
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