(CNN) — One of the most famous quotes about politics is Otto von Bismarck’s observation that it’s the “art of the possible.”
But when it comes to Daylight Saving Time, a more apt version comes from economist John Kenneth Galbraith’s 1962 letter to President John F. Kennedy: “Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.”
Congress is yet again flirting with eliminating the United States’ twice-yearly ritual of changing the clocks by an hour — this time, by making Daylight Saving Time permanent. The House voted in favor of that change Tuesday by an overwhelming margin, 308-117.
But in many ways, this issue epitomizes political populism run amok.
Changing clocks is bad and we don’t like it? OK, then let’s just stop doing that! If the status quo is bad, then the alternative must be better.
Indeed, to hear some supporters of this effort tell it, this is a virtually cost-free maneuver — a no-brainer with no discernible downsides.
It’s called the Sunshine Protection Act, after all. Who could oppose protecting sunshine? President Donald Trump, who supports the move, wrote in May that it would give people “a longer, brighter Day.”
“And who can be against that?” he added.
Well, as it turns out, lots of people can be. Because they were when the United States tried this back in the 1970s. Americans were soon reminded that there was a good reason that we started changing the clocks in the first place. And public opinion turned on a dime.
In the midst of an energy crisis, President Richard Nixon proposed making Daylight Saving Time permanent for the next two winters in order to conserve it. And the change was quickly implemented for the winter of 1973-74.
But polls showed support falling off a cliff. Data from the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago showed 79% supported the change in December; that fell to 42% by February. Other polls showed support dropping even lower.
The move didn’t actually save much energy, according to a later study from the Department of Transportation. But it did produce a series of other changes that, it turned out, were problematic.
Among them, as Daylight Saving Time scholar Michael Downing wrote in 2005, were that it put clocks out of sync with Europe, made religious rituals related to sunrises more difficult, and, contrary to popular opinion, wasn’t popular with farmers.
But at the top of the list was the months of cold, dark mornings it created. While supporters of permanent Daylight Saving Time pitch it as increasing sunlight, it really just shifts it later in the winter.
What that means, practically speaking, is that many Americans go to school and work in the dark for months on end. The Washington Post in 2024 produced some great visualizations on what this change means for all corners of the country.
A few telling points:
- Some parts of Michigan, North Dakota and Montana would see their latest sunrises start after 9:30 a.m.
- The latest sunrises in Indianapolis and Seattle would be around 9 a.m.
- Washington, DC, for example, wouldn’t see the sun rise before 8 a.m. for more than two and a half months.
- Parts of more than half a dozen states would see at least five months of no sunrises before 8 a.m.
The biggest downside of adopting this permanently meant putting children at the bus stop in the cold and dark — which some feared was deadly.
Time magazine reported in February 1974 that eight Florida children had died in early morning traffic accidents a month after the change took place, compared to just two in the same period the year prior. When Congress voted to nix the change later in 1974, The New York Times quoted an anonymous House member saying: “There seemed to be some indication that there were more deaths, and everyone got a little nervous.”
It’s valid to ask whether keeping the clocks on Daylight Saving Time actually led to deaths — or, more specifically, whether it led to more deaths than changing the clocks does. The latter, after all, could lead to accidents by throwing off people’s circadian rhythms and putting them behind the wheel when they might be sleep deprived. An academic study in 2016 estimated that changing the clocks “caused over 30 deaths at a social cost of $275 million annually.”
But that gets at the key point here. This is a choice between suboptimal options created by how our society functions and how sunlight hours shift over the course of the year because of Earth’s rotation.
And too often, proposals to stop changing clocks are treated like a simple fix for an annoying thing.
The Senate passed this change by unanimous consent — in other words, without lengthy debate — back in 2022.
Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa remarked at the time: “All I know is, constantly, every year, my wife wants it to be permanent.”
But GOP Sen. Tom Cotton later expressed regret for not objecting and has become a passionate opponent of this change, for many of the reasons described above.
The Arkansas Republican has warned his colleagues to learn the lessons of 1974. And some appear to have obliged, given the change only passed narrowly in the Senate Commerce Committee last year, 16-12 — after no objections in the entire Senate just three years prior.
“Not every human problem has a legislative solution,” Cotton said last year. “Sometimes we have to live with an uneasy compromise between competing priorities and interests. That’s doubly true when considering how the movement of the stars and the planets affects the lives of 350 million souls spread across our vast continental nation.”
That doesn’t exactly fit on bumper sticker. But it’s a good point.
The-CNN-Wire
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