Sunday, July 22, 2007

He Didn't Even Bring up Briley Parkway....

When Newt Gingrich says that government does not work as well as it used to, it is hard to argue with him:

The transcontinental railroad was completed in six years. Today, it takes twenty-three years to add a runway to the Atlanta airport.

Chicago, San Francisco, and Galveston were rapidly rebuilt largely with private money after turn of the century disasters devastated the cities. Today, much of New Orleans looks not altogether different than it did immediately after the flood waters receded despite billions of taxpayer dollars spent.

The 1.1. mile Zion-Mt. Carmel Tunnel in Zion National Park was completed in less than three years. The so-called “Big Dig” in Boston took so long that soon after it was completed, it already needed repairs.

The Manhattan Project took two years, eleven months and three days. Neil Armstrong took the first steps onto the lunar surface a mere six years, ten months, and eight days after President Kennedy vowed to put a man on the moon. There is currently no comparable effort to achieve energy independence and NASA has just announced a thirty year plan to get to Mars.

More disturbingly, it took America less than five years after Pearl Harbor to mobilize, build the largest Navy the world have ever seen, and then fight and defeat our enemies. We are now approaching the six year anniversary of 9/11 and still struggling as a nation not only to define a strategy for victory, but to define who it is we are fighting.

It is clear that the machinery of government is broken. It’s been so corroded by red tape and the bureaucratic self-preservation of members of permanent government that we are reaching a crisis of competency in our government’s capacity to execute its core functions.

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