THE AERIAL TRAM: A WAY OUT

Have you ever been involved in contract negotiations? Here’s a technique I learned that might help with the tram. Typically there’d be some kind of conditions in the workplace that one side would want to put in writing, and the other side would not. Management might not want to get boxed in, so they would look across the table and say, “There’s no need to add that. You can trust us to carry that out on our own. That’s what we want to do anyway.” The natural response would be, “Uh, we don’t trust you, and if you’re going to implement it anyway, why are you hesitant to put it in writing?” That approach is all wrong.
Instead, look across the table and say, “Oh, we trust you. We trust you implicitly, with our lives, with our hearts, and with our souls. But someday, you might get huge promotions out of here – in fact, it’s just a matter of time - and then we might be dealing with a whole new team, a team that might not have your morals and character. So, as long as you’re going to do it anyway, can you put it in writing in case that new team isn’t as good as you are?”
It works with the Bush administration’s supporters as well: “We’re not for an instant questioning the wisdom of giving President Bush unlimited powers in a time of war, because he’s up to the job. But what if we give these powers and the next president comes in without that same level of moral clarity. What if the next president isn’t surrounded by such men of integrity as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld? What if the new guys mislead us?”
In short, a little flattery can help a situation, and offer both sides a way out. So how does this apply to the tram?
We’ve tried saying that the tram is a bad idea, and that’s a mistake. Politicians hunker down sometimes when you call them idiots. They go into ass-covering mode, and nothing gets done. So here goes:
The problem with the tram isn’t that it’s a bad idea. No, the idea is simply too good. These politicians haven’t been stupid and incompetent. If anything, they’ve been too diligent, and too brilliant thinking this up.
If we build the tram, people will come from the ends of the earth to ride it. That's how amazing it would be. The tram would become the centerpiece of a visit to America, and these tourists wouldn't ride it once. They’d ride it over and over again. We'd have more congestion than ever, and the good doctors who swung this deal, would have to ask the city council for relief again. Maybe a world class helicopter to shuttle over the traffic, now worse than ever.
So, it is not because the tram is a bad idea that we must cancel it. No, wise leaders of Portland, we must cancel the tram because what you have done here is simply too good.