The Case for Boring Government
Competent administration produces no story. That is why it is undersupplied, and why the absence is felt everywhere.
The functions of government that people rely on most are the ones nobody discusses. Permits issued on schedule. Benefits paid correctly. Records kept accurately. Roads maintained before they fail.
None of it generates coverage, which means none of it generates political reward. A legislator who improves processing times has accomplished something real and unmentionable. A legislator who introduces a doomed bill on a contested issue gets a segment.
The result is a persistent underinvestment in administrative capacity, which then produces the failures that generate the coverage, which are addressed with new programs rather than with the capacity to run the existing ones.
Breaking the loop requires valuing something that is by nature invisible. That is a hard thing to ask of a political system, and it is roughly the whole problem.
Claire Vantassel writes for The 13th Bell on ideas. This piece was edited and fact checked before publication.
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