Recommended: American Power Act

David Brooks wrote a good piece in the April 30, 2010 New York Times: American Power Act. He likens the proposed energy legislation to the Railroad Act of 1862 - an act full of stupid ideas and giveaways to moneyed interests, but that nevertheless resulted eventually in a transcontinental railway that drove American innovation and prosperity for a century.

Just so, he argues, any energy legislation out of Congress will certainly be larded with favors for special interests and stupid ideas, but nevertheless may be the implement to revitalize America in the long term if it eventually results in our becoming the world's energy innovator and leader.

He makes a good point. Anything out of a national political process will of necessity be a messy compromise, and true believers on all sides will carp at it and feel betrayed (think of the recent health bill, for example). Yet in the end it is the long-run effect that matters, not the short-term compromises or the initial stupidities in the legislation that matters.