Washington, the Nation's Weather Wimp

Washington is notorious for closing down the region because of snow. Steven Pearlstein, the business columnist for the Washington Post, has a column about this today.

As he says "Can someone explain to me why the capital of the richest and most powerful country in the world needs to be shut down by the mere threat of an eight-inch snowstorm? Are people in Buffalo or Providence so much smarter or tougher that a routine event that barely causes them to miss a step brings Washington to its knees?"

When I was growing up in Michigan, it wasn't uncommon for schools to be closed due to snow, but everything else was open. Of course, that was back in the day when many households had one parent at home... The University of Michigan closed for snow maybe one day in over 100 years. Here, stores and malls close, movie theaters close, etc.

Another great thing is that people get off from work early "due to snow" and create massive traffic jams. I enjoy whizzing by them on my bicycle, especially when so many drivers feel superior in the snow because they have SUVs.

Similarly, new City Councilmember Marion Barry cancelled the Martin Luther King Day Parade that is held in his ward, because it was too cold that day. Maybe it was, but we can't expect the world to stop in its tracks for us. It wasn't a tsunami.

As Pearlstein says: "What we are witnessing, I believe, is a self-reinforcing cycle of falling expectations and herd mentality... The essential lesson of welfare reform, of school reform, of corporate reengineering is that if you set expectations high and give people the necessary tools, they will rise to the challenge."

"Despite what you hear from the snow defeatists, this isn't a matter of safety, it's a matter of preparedness, ingenuity and will. In a regional economy that produces a billion dollars worth of goods and services each workday, cutting and running at the first snowflake results in a significant loss of productivity and output. Worse, it teaches our kids to be wimps."

Perseverance is an important lesson to learn.