U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., stopped by last week and said, among a lot of other things, that America needs bigger ideas. He lamented that for 25 years we've been mired in things too small.

As a nation, "we need more creativity and imagination," he said, not quite pounding the conference table, but he seemed to mean it. "We need big ideas," he said with an exclamation point!

Like what? I asked.

"Infrastructure! Highways! Rail! Education!"

For more, please go to ConnPost.com/elections, where his 90-minute conversation with our editorial board is on video. But wait, before viewing keep reading. The state's senior senator got deeper into the rail big idea — Europe has high-speed rail — and brought it smaller — we have Metro-North going 20 mph under wires that break too often along tracks littered with the detritus of a woebegone society. He came up with a small idea — hire some kids to clean up the litter along the tracks.

When he turned to education, he started getting angry. Southport and Bridgeport are 16 minutes apart and different worlds — the old two Connecticuts thing — especially in education. "It shouldn't have to be that way," he said.

And that's true, but it has been that way ever since white people started moving to the suburbs.

Now, I like senators who ask us to think big. But often it is writers who are way ahead of our political class.

Take James Howard Kunstler, for example, who had big ideas on the

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burbs. In the past 15 years he has had two insightful, scathing, best-selling attacks on suburbia in his "Geography of Nowhere" and "Home from Nowhere."

He railed with skill and persuasive writing about the ugliness of big box stores in our soulless suburban architectural landscape; the climate-altering superhighways clogged with exhaust-spewing vehicles as we all ride to work in the city and escape back to the safety of the burbs at quitting time.

He didn't set out to solve the two Connecticuts — the poor and failing urban education systems and the better schools in the suburbs.

But his big idea now encompasses the end of two Connecticuts, two Americas in a way that is disturbing, but in his mind, coming.

With the end of cheap oil will come the end of American society, which he graphically portrays in his just published novel, "World Made by Hand" (Atlantic Monthly).

"In this novel, his 10th, he visits a future posited on his signature idea: when the oil wells start to run dry, the world economy will collapse and society as we know it will cease," writes Publishers Weekly.

"Re-establishing basic infrastructure is a big enough challenge, but Kunstler's world is convincing if didactic. Readers willing to go for the ride will see a frightening and bleak future."

Warlords fight over crumbling suburbs; pirates invade the West Coast. Highways are empty. People try to grow food in local gardens. The president might or might not be in Minnesota.

As I said, this is a big idea book (full disclosure: Mr. Kunstler and I are old college chums).

Where he gives no quarter is to the idea that we are smart enough to avoid doomsday. That through technology, invention, Mr. Dodd's "creativity and imagination," we might survive the end of oil through wind power or something better than ethanol.

As we continue to discuss the seemingly never-ending problems of urban education, drug abuse and crime; as we try to solve these ills in ways we have not yet, it does not hurt to think, my God, there could be bigger problems. Problems that make litter along the railroad tracks rather quaint.

The senator is right; we need to think bigger and start seeing the future.

James H. Smith is the editor of the Connecticut Post. You can reach him at 203-330-6325 or by e-mail at jsmith@ctpost.com.