Um, so if you’re disappointed with Ray LaHood, that suggests you had high hopes for him when he was nominated for Transportation Secretary? Somehow I think the same people who now claim to be “disappointed” with LaHood already had zero expectations for him to begin with.

I’ll echo Joshua @5. And it really comes down to an understanding of politics and human psychology.

The fact that Ray LaHood is not going around zealously preaching the transit gospel and puritanically telling car-driving sinners to repent should be taken not as a bad thing for those of us who do subscribe to the transit/density gospel; it should be taken as a good thing.

But then, that goes back to why some of us thought LaHood had the potential to be an inspired pick for Transportation Secretary to begin with. Conservative Americans are going to welcome stuff like high-speed rail thanks to the Ray LaHoods of the world, not the Al Gores of the world.

LaHood’s briefing omits two important factors: peak oil and the cost of defending overseas oil supplies. Fortunately Obama is well aware of these already. LaHood also doesn’t mention bicycling among the transportation options.

We can hope that these were merely left out of the short briefing, and not an indication of LaHood’s intentions.

Kind of a disappointment for us urbanism types…

“I don’t think they picked me because they thought I’d be that great a transportation person,”

or how about this quote?

…When asked if he could foresee disagreeing with the administration on anything, Mr. LaHood shrugged, and eventually shook his head. “I’ve never been passionate about any particular issue,” he said. “I’m not going to sit around agonizing. The answer is, probably not.”

sigh.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA