http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/nyregion/05zero.html?hpTHIS article about the new World Trade Center is already out of date.
The pace of construction is so swift that any status report these days gets overtaken rapidly by the arrival of new beams and columns, rebar and concrete, pipes and conduit. About 2,000 construction workers are on the job, weekends included, officials said, and that number will just keep rising. Visiting the site brings to mind the tumultuous first impressions of arrival in New York City: people, vehicles and objects are headed toward you from every direction at startling velocity, and the only prudent thing to do is to keep moving.
Two years ago, it was difficult to imagine how the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site of the trade center and is building most of it, could ever finish the eight-acre memorial in time for the 10th anniversary of the attack, on Sept. 11, 2011. Today, it is difficult to imagine what would stop them (though, given the site’s tortured history, the possibility shouldn’t be completely dismissed).
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Most Americans don't even know that Ground Zero is being rebuilt. The Ground Zero rebuilding is the perfect background for the message Obama needs to expound for the next two months to limit Democratic losses to something merely severe, not Presidency-ending.
If Obama is smart, he will travel to Ground Zero on September 11, and make sure that Americans find out what is happening there, but more importantly, use it as a jumping off point for the Democratic message of the next 8 weeks or so: That America is recovering, even if the data don't fully support it yet, and that sacrifice and hardship today will be paid off with reward tomorrow, even if it doesn't feel like it yet. No one else is going to make this argument for the Democrats. This argument must be made forcefully. They can't worry
too much about seeming too optimistic and out of touch. A little positivity is just what people might respond to at this time. I think the news has been negative for so long that some optimism would be well received.
The antithesis of this:
