Bull Moose Explains the Highway Bill

From Bull Moose:

...Roads rock. Roads are romantic. Simple, yes, but true. The Mooselings love roads. And if the Moosleings are right about this one, so do most Americans. They may not give voice to that love, but deep down, in their daily lives and genetic identity, they are inherently and soulfully connected to our nation's highways and byways. And, mundane as they may seem, those roads are one of the most regular and most tangible links that most people have to some sort of shared national experience -- talk about common ground. Any forward-thinking politician trying to position himself strategically for 2008, would be wise to court the asphalt voter.

For many people, new roads, like sprawl in general, are either good or bad. They ruin our way of life, some say, they are environmentally unsound, and cut away at our community. But, others respond, you can't stop progress, and you should stop hating on America. The Mooslings argue that highways, and the vehicles we love to drive on them, aren't that easy to pigeonhole, they're far more ambiguous, alluring, overwhelming, and complicated.

A long time ago, Robert Penn Warren captured that menacing power in the opening pages of All the King's Men, describing a southern Highway 58, in 'the country where the age of the internal combustion engine has come into its own,' a strange land:

Where the smell of gasoline and burning brake bands and red-eye is sweeter than myrrh. Where the eight-cylinder jobs come roaring around the curves in the red hills and scatter the gravel like spray, and when they ever get down in the flat country, and hit the slab God have mercy on the mariner.