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’Twas the month after the election, and all through the land, there was an airing of grievances and wringing of hands.
Fingers were pointed, blame spread all around, perhaps so much so that little truth could be found.
The older I get, the less time I have for retrospective hot takes: If only we’d done more of this or said that better or spent money here or paid more attention to this group.
As we head into the new year, I have a simple message for those who have been entrusted with the power to govern: Please just make things work.
I know not everyone loves government, and that’s largely how things break down along partisan lines, but no matter where you fall on that spectrum, you have to interact with government on some level almost every day of your life.
People get annoyed when things don’t function properly, and when people get annoyed, they tend to look for alternatives to the things that are annoying them. In the private sector, that looks like free-market competition. In politics, it can look like change at the ballot box.
It might feel brain-breakingly simple, but if you do the things you say you’re going to do, and they work reasonably well, people don’t tend to get annoyed.
Former Gov. Mitch Daniels offers us a fine example. When he came into office in 2005, he promised to transform visiting the Bureau of Motor Vehicles from an experience every Hoosier dreaded to something more customer-focused.
He implemented some pretty basic changes that, after some initial challenges, cut wait times and made it possible to do a lot of transactions online or by mail that used to require an in-person visit. Twenty years later, those reforms are no longer reforms: They’re just the way the BMV operates.
I mention those initial challenges because they are bound to happen in public and private sectors alike, but people tend to be forgiving as long as they see forward progress. The trouble comes when those challenges persist over time—and become standard operating procedure instead of exceptions to the rule.
To wit: The post office routinely loses or fails to deliver our mail. The IRS has applied payments to the wrong tax year. The alley behind our house looks like it’s been hit by incoming artillery.
These are just things that have happened to me personally. They are mere inconveniences on the grander scale of Things That Do Not Work.
Most recently, we’ve seen some outstanding local journalism documenting the chronic failure of the Indianapolis Housing Agency to literally “do their name” and provide low-income residents in our city with access to safe housing.
Our neighbors who are most in need are being evicted through no fault of their own or placed in housing that’s harming their health. According to one of the stories, “Nearly $1 million meant to fund the voucher program, according to a 2007 audit, instead went to unrelated expenses, including travel and advertising.”
Not to point out the obvious, but that audit was almost 20 years ago, and it seems nothing has changed. It’s business as usual.
Which brings me to why, regardless of party, we need our elected officials—and those they select to oversee their day-to-day operations—to run things well.
We can have grand debates about the role of government, and we can make legislative and executive changes to expand or contract that role, but while that debate is ongoing, government needs to do the things it has committed to doing, ideally in an above-average or even exceptional way.
That might not be a recipe for winning every election, but it’s a baseline every single leader should strive to hit.•
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Chartier is a lifelong Indianapolis resident and owner of Mass Ave Public Relations. Send comments to ibjedit@ibj.com.
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