A ‘Golden Spike’ to Transform America from Coast to Coast

Note: This post was published by Stephen Burke and Douglas Macgregor Monday, January 8, 2018 for The Washington Times.

When a golden spike was driven into the rails connecting the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads at Promontory Summit, Utah Territory on May 10, 1869, interstate railways annihilated distance in the space of one generation and transformed America into a unified nation from coast to coast. The cost for an American to travel across the continent dropped from $1,000 to $150.

President Trump is in the hunt for a new golden spike that will make American infrastructure great again. But the president wants to do more than clean up the “hardened arteries” strangling America’s interior. He wants to administer “bypass surgery.” In the global marketplace of non-stop competition, the President knows he needs more than a bullet list for infrastructure development.

President Obama tried a piecemeal approach and it failed. The solution is strategic vision to guide capital investment in ways that exploit American market advantage in geography, resources, and governance.

Like the Roman state that shaped and led the political and economic development of the Western world for centuries from its central position in the Mediterranean, America must capitalize on its enviable strategic position straddled by the world’s two largest oceans across which are the Europe and Asian markets.