Stories of high-speed rail's death have been greatly exaggerated...

A blog post at NYTimes.com yesterday talks about the likely incoming House Transportation Committee Chairman, Rep. John Mica (R-FL). Unlike other Republicans, he's not interested in killing high-speed rail outright but rather redirecting its funding elsewhere.

I still think the Regional Hubs identified by the White House make sense and the incoming Wisconsin Governor does need to think twice about whether or not it makes business sense to sever the link between Chicago and Minneapolis that will run through his state. It's likely to generate quite a bit of revenue and I still stand behind my initial assessment that it's nothing more than political posturing for an election and not an actually policy decision that will be made.

Or at least I hope so, because I'd really like to arrive in Milwaukee one day in a train station that looks like the rendering of the proposed Milwaukee station pictured above.

Bipartisanship? Easier said than done. Easier dismissed than done too.

Joe Scarborough had a column in Politico earlier this week about bipartisanship. The column itself contained much recycled verbiage from the final chapter of his most recent book. In fact, I even cited this incident in my review of the book on Amazon.com. It still is a lesson in how a determined person with a curious mind can overcome the most opinionated of obstacles.

Which brings us to something that happened on Wednesday in Chicago. After a contentious Senate race that was determined by less than 2% of the votes, the Republican Senator-elect Mark Kirk and the Democratic runner-up Alexi Giannoulias decided to meet up for drinks. I'm sure this will soon be followed by the "Merlot Summit" between President Obama and the presumptive Speaker-to-be John Boehner.

The only issue is politicians have to work together and do so much less begrudgingly than people think. They are in it to get re-elected and if pandering to hate-mongering is the way to do it, so be it. However, that is not in their nature. The conventional wisdom is it's not in human nature either. But I'm starting to question that conventional wisdom when, after e-mailing the Scarborough column to a close friend of polar opposite political leanings, I received the following reply:

"Read it, don't agree with it. When a side wins it won't be wise to let their 'enemies' off the hook."

This reply came from someone I know pretty well and someone I know well enough to know that this individual did not feel the same way after the 2006 and 2008 election results. Where have our politics gone when common sense advice is dismissed by common sense people solely because it requires them to suspend their own political opinions long enough to listen to someone else's point-of-view?

Be careful what you wish for...

I think Ezra Klein explains it best in today's Wonkbook why it seems like the most gridlock-inducing scenario is what ended up being played out as a result of last night's election results:

"Welcome to gridlocked America: The GOP is on track to win about 65 seats in the House of Representatives, and 47 or 48 in the Senate. This is a huge victory: the Republican House majority will be the largest since 1928. But it is not a governing majority, even on the congressional level. Democrats still hold the upper chamber. In fact, Harry Reid still leads the upper chamber.

From the perspective of actually getting anything done in the next two years, there was perhaps no worse outcome. Republicans don't fully control Congress, so they don't have enough power to be blamed for legislative outcomes. But Democrats don't control the House and they don't have a near-filibuster proof majority in the Senate, so they can't pass legislation. Republicans, in other words, are not left with the burden of governance, and Democrats are not left with the power to govern. Republicans don't have to be responsible, and Democrats can't do it for them."

By the way, the daily Wonkbook e-mail/blog post is a great read to stay on top of all policies issues going on in Washington.