I was born into the amazingly successful World War II era. At that time, the American economy made up half of the world’s total economic activity. Our competitors and allies had been bombed, and we had built factories in security. The GI Bill was working, and a generation of eager young Americans was going to rapidly-expanding colleges. My father was one of them.
Affordable housing was springing up everywhere, and it had nothing to do with government assistance. The American auto industry dominated the world. General Motors had become the model corporation, explained by Peter Drucker’s pioneering series of management training books.
Edwards Deming’s system of quality — founded on the real work of Western Electric in manufacturing — was leading to dramatic increases in productivity.
My childhood was surrounded by examples of American power, success and natural leadership.
Of course, there was a Cold War with the Soviet Union. But it was a conflict we were almost certainly going to win. In NSC 68, the key planning document for the Cold War, it was made clear that the sheer productivity of a free society would eventually overwhelm the much more limited creativity of a totalitarian state. That was the basis for our whole strategy of containment until the Soviet Union’s collapse.
Since that period of extraordinary achievement, America has been decaying. At first, the momentum of our sheer size concealed the decay, but it gradually became obvious to those paying attention to the balance of world power.
Our infrastructure is no longer the best in the world. Our schools are decaying in their ability to educate. Our cities are filled with homeless people and often crime-ridden. Beginning with the Vietnam War, we have invested countless lives and treasure in a long series of unending failures overseas.
As government has grown bigger, it has grown more incompetent.
I have supported and been part of a series of reforms which at times have helped marginally improve things. Welfare reform brought millions out of poverty. School choice has grown steadily as an antidote to bureaucratic unionism and ideological brainwashing. Our balancing of the budget for four years in the late 1990s proved it could be done. The Goldwater-Nichols Act dramatically improved our military’s ability to fight jointly.
Yet each of these piecemeal reforms failed to stop the drift toward mediocrity and decay. We need a deeper, universal and demonstrably measurable standard that can be applied across the entire failing system of American culture and institutions.
The key to that change is to reestablish accountability.
Tasks must have measurable goals. If those goals are not achieved, things and — if necessary — people must change.
In fact, in a March poll at America’s New Majority Project, we asked, “What would you most need to see to believe we are getting America back on track?” The number one combined answer (first, second and third most important) was “More accountability from leaders in government.”
The centrality of accountability hit me when I was reviewing Coach Vince Lombardi’s opening year at the Green Bay Packers.
The Packers had just had the worst season in the history of the franchise. As the team’s website describes it, “When Lombardi arrived in Green Bay in 1959, the Packers were coming off their worst season ever, a 1-10-1 finish, and hadn’t had a winning record in 11 years. His first year, the Packers finished 7-5, and he was named NFL Coach of the Year.”
Lombardi started by telling his players that he had never been on a team that didn’t make it to the championship game. He did not intend to start at Green Bay. Their goal was not merely to improve. Their goal was to become excellent and get to the top.
As a goal, that was admirable. How he achieved it was legendary.
Lombardi did not get rid of the worst players and trade for an improved Packers team. In fact, five of the players from the worst team ended up as NFL Hall of Famers.
He took the roster of the worst team in Green Bay history and forged it into the most formidable force in the league. It became legendary. This is why the trophy for the Super Bowl is the Lombardi Trophy.
John Madden wrote that he never realized how little he knew about football until he sat through a lecture by Lombardi. As Madden took notes, Lombardi spent four hours describing the Green Bay sweep.
What mattered in the Green Bay sweep was execution. Every player had to perform his role perfectly. The Packers practiced for perfection, which was unattainable. But the effort led to excellence. Good was failure. Perfect was the goal.
If something or someone did not work, it had to be fixed. There was a relentless quality to Lombardi’s approach that created a momentum that was beautiful to watch. The key to all that was accountability.
Imagine that after the disastrous American withdrawal from Afghanistan, there had been accountability for the military professionals responsible.
Imagine that, after a number of Baltimore city schools reportedly had zero students proficient in math, that the entire faculty and administration was replaced and a plan executed with measurable results. Imagine that there was a commitment to keep changing personnel until the students were actually being educated. (This could also require involving parents and thinking beyond the normal education bureaucracy.)
Imagine that key figures responsible for the deadly failures managing COVID-19 had been held accountable.
Imagine that we took the addiction crisis seriously and prevented the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. Instead, we have allowed many American cities to become open-air drug markets. More than 100,000 Americas die each year because we are afraid to take obvious steps to prevent — and help people avoid — addiction.
The key to accountability is Deming’s key principle. You get what you inspect, not what you expect. You set goals that are measurable, and you keep innovating and adapting until you reach those goals.
That would be a successful America.
This op-ed is part of The Hill’s “How to Fix America” series exploring solutions to some of America’s most pressing problems.
Newt Gingrich was Speaker of the House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999. His writing appears on Gingrich360.com, and he hosts the Newt’s World podcast.