Road trips are quintessentially American. What’s more America than a family packing into an SUV and driving hundreds of miles across state borders, eating homemade sandwiches and entertaining children with endless games of “I Spy,” just to see beautiful views and a couple of major landmarks?
Family road trips from our home in southern Michigan to New Hampshire, Alabama, northern Michigan, and Yellowstone National Park formed strong childhood memories and made me love my country. If we couldn’t swing a long trek to a National Park, we tried to see some part of America—even if it was just a state park on Lake Michigan.
Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy’s efforts to encourage similar “tourism and travel” by filming “The Great American Road Trip” with his wife Rachel Campos-Duffy and their nine children is a great promotion of American tourism and this classic summer pastime.
Road tripping captures part of our national character. The same independence and desire to see the limits of America that drove the pioneers to follow the Oregon Trail are what stir Americans today to take Route 66 from Chicago, Illinois to Santa Monica, California.
Yet Democrat Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Patty Murray of Washington lambasted Duffy for this project in a recent hearing regarding the 2027 Department of Transportation Budget Request.
Both alleged the trip’s funding raised ethical concerns, with Gillibrand saying the road trip “doesn’t smell right” because the nonprofit that funded the trip received donations from companies such as Toyota and Boeing, implying that Duffy would favor those organizations for sponsoring his family’s “vacation.”
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It’s unjust of the senators to assume there is some behind-the-scenes understanding between Duffy and these companies, as if Boeing will get unsafe aircraft designs approved by the DOT because they earned Duffy’s favor by contributing to a nonprofit that funded his America 250 project.
They’re questioning why Toyota and Shell would promote American road trips, as if there must be a deeper reason why a car and a gasoline company would encourage Americans to travel this summer.
It seems doubtful that Toyota tried to buy Duffy’s favor. They want Americans to buy their cars.
Specifically, they’ve donated to a nonprofit to advertise for them not only by encouraging car trips, but by showing a family traveling in a Toyota vehicle. Presenting traveling by car as part of our American identity is the oldest trick in the book for car advertisements. Chevrolet released their iconic “Baseball Hot Dogs Apple Pie” ad in 1974, promoting its vehicles as classic Americana culture. This summer, Toyota’s doing the same.
Duffy stated in an X post on May 9 that “career ethics and budget officials” reviewed and approved his participation in filming “The Great American Road Trip.” He’s been charged with promoting travel in America and celebrating the 250th anniversary of our nation’s founding, plus he and his wife met because they were both stars on reality TV shows.
Why wouldn’t he promote American tourism with a TV series on YouTube, the most popular online platform?
Murray also claimed that the trip is “incredibly out of touch” with the high gas prices that are a burden for many Americans, citing the national average cost for a gallon of gas at $4.50. Gas prices are high now, but when Duffy and The Great American Road Trip Inc. launched this campaign in September, gas prices were at a national average of $3.17, $1.33 cheaper than the average when the senators grilled Duffy.
It will cost more to take a road trip this summer than Duffy could have anticipated when he and his family filmed their trip. But for many families, sacrificing morning Starbucks runs and delaying the purchase of a new TV to bring their children to hike the Adirondacks or marvel at the stone faces carved into Mount Rushmore is worth it.
Duffy’s project calls Americans to celebrate our nation’s culture in the summer of America’s semiquincentennial and revel in the land our forefathers fought for us to have.
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