WHY GOVERNMENTS FAIL AND DISAPPOINT US

Governments, like life itself, are seldom simple and often neither black nor white but a strange and fascinating blend of two colors.

This inability of government to provide a clear and definitive image to its constituents helps explain why John Q. Public is so often confused, and thereby angry, with the matrix of governance that guides and directs his life at the local, county, state and federal levels.

Citizens who are convinced both by experience and logic that life, itself, is complex and complicated often express disillusionment and dissatisfaction when governments begin mirroring the complexities of individual lives. One is likely to hear a plethora of complaints of real or imagined failures at the municipal level simply because city halls are most often charged with delivering the basic, everyday services that make our lives both orderly and civilized. What can be more disconcerting than when a municipal service, such as sewer or water, fails and citizens are left without such necessities?

Because they are larger, and thus more remote, citizens are less impatient with service failures in state and national capitols, but in these instances we taxpayers demand not better service but improved, less complex systems that everyone can understand and find logical. The failure of the State of Missouri to provide better systems for public education, welfare, mental health and industrial development is seen not as a failure to manage better delivery of these services but an inability of Jefferson City to devise systems that provide sought-after improvements. State government is viewed as being of sufficient size and possessing adequate manpower to deliver any service, if it's available. It is the state's failure to place into effect the proper system that so irritates and infuriates its constituents.

Missouri, like every other state in the country, has two basic service delivery systems: direct and systemic. Jefferson City sends checks directly to the unemployed, the indigent, public schools, state employees and a variety of other societal segments within our 114 counties. Although this is the most visible activity of the state, this direct delivery function is the least complicated and the simplest to carry out. It is a mechanical function, not an intellectual or even a philosophical one. Although it is the most visible, it can be carried out by any entity, regardless of size, when sufficient manpower and equipment are available.

The second portion of Missouri's central government, while by far the more important and most complex, is seldom discussed, much less debated, by its constituents. This is understandable for a number of reasons, among them being that systems are inherently complicated and require both knowledge and vision, qualities that are seldom in great abundance anywhere in the world. It is neglected for still another reason: there's not much political mileage in devising proper service systems if the one in place is working reasonably well.

If the Department of Social Services is delivering enough checks to keep indigent homeless off the sidewalks we must travel each day, then we have been trained over a long period of time not to worry what system the agency uses to meet our expectations. If we don't see any overtly psychotic persons running around the neighborhood, citizens seldom worry about the programs devised by the Department of Mental Health to treat its patients. If Johnny and Mary can read, parents don't often question whether local schools are equipping them for anything other than passing basic tests. And if police officers lock up criminals, we don't seem to worry about the difference between overloaded jails and preventing crime.

This public myopia is fostered and engendered by our political leaders, the presidents, governors, congressmen, legislators, county commissioners and city councilmen we elect every two, four or six years.

There's a very good reason these men and women worry about the delivery of water and sewer services, welfare checks and other public services rather than the proper systems of governance. It is hard to get elected, harder still to stay in office and the public has little interest in the most important, most neglected aspect of self-government, namely the systems used to govern.

And since it's hard work to get elected in the first place, and much more difficult to please constituents once elected, most politicians, being as human as the people they represent, avoid confusing and antagonizing voters.

As a result, America, and consequently Missouri, has spawned not public servants but politicians. The latter worry about the delivery of checks, while public servants are concerned with whether checks should be delivered in the first place. This is why governments fail and disappoint us.