Reagan National Airport will reopen as early as tomorrow.
I drove there this morning. It is 3.5 miles from my garage to the southern end of the airport. Dulles airport is 35 miles from my home so there is a ten-fold increase in travel time involved.
I tell you this to indicate I have a vested interest in Reagan National (whose three letter designation is DCA) being reopened. Even though I think it should have remained closed.
The backers of the re-opening are the local business and political leaders - the Mayor and the Member of Congress from Washington, DC; the Congressmen and U.S. Senators from Virginia, and Jim Gilmore who, as the Governor of Virginia had to side with the locals, but as the head of the Republican National Committee would have had some responsibility to back the President had the decision gone the other way.
While that argument was brewing in Washington, another issue was bubbling along the Mexico-US border.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service had instituted new identity cards - called Laser Visas - for Mexicans
who need to travel across the border for brief periods and short distances. People who, for instance, need to shop
in San Diego, or El Paso, or Laredo.
Three months ago this card-replacement policy was announced with the effective date being this past Sunday
night at midnight.
Local business and political leaders in San Diego and West Texas wanted the transition period to be extended
in case everyone didn't get the word.
The decision was made not to extend the deadline. People with the old-style ID cards were turned back at
the border.
Lots of good stuff on the SDR today. There is an e-mail from the deck of the USS Theodore Roosevelt; a travelogue about my adventures to pay my Virginia car tax; and a Catchy Caption.
Ok, class, let's examine these two cases.
The border case was one of national security versus the local economies. The US government wants to more closely control who comes over our borders and these ID cards have scanned fingerprints as well as other security measures built in.
San Diego and cities along the enormous Texas-Mexico border depend upon this daily retail trade with
Mexican citizens for hundreds of millions of dollars per year in sales.
The argument to reopen DCA had the same overtones in the beginning: The local economy (10,000 jobs were in danger of being lost and a billion dollars a year or more in lost revenue to the region were the big numbers bandied about) versus national security.
If that's where the discussion had begun and ended, DCA would remain closed because it was approximately the same line of reasoning as every community which has had a military base closing has used since we started closing surplus military bases.
Here's what the DCA folks did: They changed the focus of the argument.
It went from focusing on the economic woes being visited upon DC and the surrounding area to a matter of national confidence:
IF REAGAN NATIONAL REMAINS CLOSED, THE FLYING PUBLIC
WILL NEVER BELIEVE THE AIR TRANSPORT SYSTEM IS SAFE.
We read and heard this in every medium - newspapers, radio talk shows and television chat shows.
By altering the terms of the discussion - from local economic issues, to being critical to the national recovery - the pro-opening folks made the psychic costs of leaving the airport closed much higher than the economic costs.
Very, very smart, and a good case study for all of us.
From an AP roundup of Supreme Court actions on its first day:
--Turned down an appeal from a former forklift operator who claimed he is disabled because an on-the-job injury left him able to have sex only twice a month.
Orders for that particular brand of forklift have soared since this announcement.
� 
