How Trump Can Build the Best Airports and Roads

Many critics of President-elect Donald Trump’s infrastructure plans are missing the point. He doesn’t want to pour hundreds of billions of dollars into upgrading roads, bridges and airports to give the economy a Keynesian jolt. Creating jobs isn’t even his primary goal. He wants visible symbols of competence and pride. “We’re becoming a third world country, because of our infrastructure, our airports, our roads,” Trump said when he announced his candidacy. He repeated the theme throughout the campaign.

Trump sometimes sounds like a jet-setting Davos Man, as he bellyaches about airports in New York and Los Angeles compared with those in Doha and Shanghai: our old metropolitan airports versus their sparkling new international hubs. (Has he never been through Denver or Minneapolis?) He is, however, voicing a frustration that unites Americans across the economic and political spectrums. You know there’s a highway problem when a popular rock song includes the lyrics, “I’m driving here I sit/Cursing my government/For not using my taxes to fill holes with more cement.” (The hit duo Twenty One Pilots is even from the political battleground of central Ohio.) Rundown airports and pitted roadways are everyday reminders that the government isn’t doing its job.