Bigger than President Obama

Gingrich Productions
July 25, 2014
Newt Gingrich

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A Fox News poll this week reported that 58% of the American people felt the Obama Administration was incompetent. That sense of incompetence included 32% of Democrats, 67% of independents and 84% of Republicans.

As president, having your political opponents believe you are incompetent is not a shock. Having two out of three independents find you are incompetent is a shock. Having one out of three of your partisan supporters consider you incompetent may mean it is time for the Obama team to panic.

This survey on incompetence came just a few weeks after Gallup reported that 79% of the American people thought the federal government is corrupt. That is a 20% jump since 2006. More Americans thought their government was corrupt than the citizens of Brazil or Tajikistan. See my newsletter on the Gallup corruption data.

When four out of five citizens think their government is corrupt there is a big problem. When three out of five also think their government is incompetent the problem may be of historic proportions.

The very fabric of a free society begins to come apart when so many people deeply distrust their own government. This is the opposite of the “we the people” model the Founding Fathers fought for and established.

The first step toward a real solution is understanding that the problem is much bigger than President Obama and his administration.

The disastrous failures of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) were painfully visible during Katrina in the Bush Administration.

Jim Frogue’s book, Stop Paying the Crooks, outlining well over $100 billion in theft from the federal bureaucracy annually, was published during the Bush Administration and remains true today.

The Veteran’s Administration scandals were bad enough during the Bush years that candidate Obama campaigned on fixing them in 2008. They have since gotten much worse and the combination of corruption, dishonesty and incompetence is now at historic levels (see our VA map and our series of articles and newsletters outlining the VA problem and systems solutions).

The State Department incompetence at delivering effective aid in Afghanistan was painfully visible by 2002.

Studies of Pentagon inefficiency go back several decades. I participated in a Military Reform Caucus starting in 1981 and problems we identified under President Reagan have simply gotten worse.

Restoring integrity, effectiveness and accountability to the federal government will be an historic undertaking far bigger and more profound than simply defeating President Obama.

If the current laws and regulations remain in effect, real change will be impossible.

If the ‘gotcha’ style investigations and hearings remain the norm, real change will be impossible.

THREE KEY STEPS BACK TOWARD COMPETENCE AND INTEGRITY

Congress and the President (if President Obama refuses, then the new president in 2017) have to make three big decisions.

1. The changes have to be systemic. For example, the problems at the VA are not isolated and based on individual failure. The VA is a system of incompetence with a culture of corruption. Spending billions more and hiring another 10,000 bureaucrats will simply create a bigger system of corrupt incompetence.

2. Technology has to play a major role in systemic reform. As we move from government out of the era of the manual typewriter to government in the era of the smartphone and iPad, we have to rethink capabilities and requirements. Carly Fiorina’s description of the 21st century as digital, mobile, virtual and personal is a good framework for rethinking all government programs. Gavin Newsom’s Citizenville is a good introduction to the potential for modern technology to empower citizens rather than bureaucrats. Steve Goldsmith’s upcoming book The Responsive City has similar ideas and examples. My book, Breakout, outlines the scale of change a smartphone empowered 21st century will achieve.

3. Systems thinking and technological empowerment mean the end of the tenured, untouchable, unaccountable unionized civil service bureaucracy as we have known it. No modern corporation could survive under federal government work rules. The current resistance to change at the VA is a classic example. If the 800-plus page national union contract (on top of a number of additional local contracts) and the current inability to reward great performers while firing bad performers are not changed, nothing serious will get done in fixing the VA. It is that clear and that simple.

Ask your congressman and senators and every presidential candidate if they will work to implement these three steps. Just before an election is the time to get their attention.

We can restore competence and integrity to government but we the people have to fight for it and insist on it.

http://www.gingrichproductions.com/2014/07/bigger-than-president-obama