Voters should reward success, then expect more of it
A while back, I chatted with a newly appointed school superintendent who came from out of state. The new leader lamented that among the district’s 700 teachers, not one was on an improvement plan. In bureaucracy talk, an improvement plan means you have to do your job better or else look for a new one.
Having researched that particular school district, I explained that the unwritten, but strictly followed, district policy mandated firing teachers for perceived disloyalty, not for bad teaching. As a result, the district had more than a few bad teachers and very few good ones willing to tell their bosses bad news. The leadership rewarded bad behavior and over time got more of it.
That typifies much of what goes on in government and politics.
As Patrick Wolf and I report in Public Administration Review statistically, there is no tendency for student learning (or lack thereof ) to influence whether a school superintendent keeps his or her job. Similarly, we found no tendency for the homicide rate to affect whether police chiefs get fired.
Instead, political questions determine government “success.” Do the mayors, city councils or school boards employing you like you? Do they see you as a political threat? Have you said anything that might lead influential groups to see you as disloyal or discriminatory?
Alas, this is not just in local government. The lack of accountability for results starts at the top with the voting public.
Consider the 2016 presidential election. Hillary Clinton’s cash scared off potential Democratic rivals, leaving only a septuagenarian socialist U.S. senator with few noted legislative successes. In short, Clinton faced a semi-successful politician.
Clinton herself was no great success. She had an average eight years in the U.S. Senate, more noted for preparing a presidential run than for legislative or oversight achievements. As U.S. secretary of state, Clinton developed no notable doctrines. (In fairness, that pleased her boss, President Barack Obama.) Clinton’s chief innovation was figuring out how to monetize the office by having those meeting with the secretary donate to the Clinton Foundation. Likewise President Donald Trump, excuse me, the Trump Organization, now collects vast sums from interest groups foreign and domestic. While probably legal, this sort of behavior should not be rewarded.
While the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries featured relative failures, the Republican counterpart offered three political leaders with achievements. John Kasich is a popular Ohio governor, and back in the 1990s served as an influential member of Congress. Jeb Bush had a good eight years as Florida governor; some experts considered him the best education governor in the nation. Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson is a self-made millionaire, a real capitalist rather than a crony capitalist, who in two terms as governor cut taxes, improved state services and left office more popular than he arrived. (Johnson left the Republican Party to run as a Libertarian.)
Instead of nominating any of these capable, successful, non-mendacious leaders, Republican primary voters chose a businessman known for three marriages, six bankruptcies and innumerable sexist, racist and outrageous statements. How could anyone consider this man a success?
Mostly, GOP primary voters seem to have chosen Trump because he was the candidate most despised by the media and academia, who, as extensive research by the late Stanley Rothman and other political scientists show, despise GOP voters. In short, the “deplorables” acted out of revenge for the out-of-touch elites who deplore them, not from any rational analysis of who might succeed as president.
To make America great again, we should reject the revenge and group loyalties that dominate politics. Retire name-calling and virtue signaling. Instead, regarding public servants like cops, teachers and elected officials, we should punish failure and reward success just as we would if our own money, rather than public money, were on the line. If we reward success, over time, America might just get more of it.