For the Common Good

February also offers us our first opportunity to welcome the new administration, and we do so with every wish for its success in tackling the nation's leading problems, whether they be old or new. George W. Bush may come to his office without much of a popular mandate, but we are sure he has the good will and hopes of all his fellow citizens for continued peace and prosperity in every corner of our disparate society. The broad spectrum and variety of problems and opportunities Bush now faces is touched upon in Government Executive's first two issues of the new year. In January, we explored some of the larger themes that will be important to our political leaders in the first decade of the new century. They include the continuing transformation in how government delivers public services and the broad management challenges needing the administration's attention. In this issue, we cover some of the more tactical issues the Bush administration will confront-from dealing with the troubling shortage of acquisition specialists in the Defense Department, to forging interagency teamwork to fight terrorism, to improving performance measurement and compensation systems for federal employees.

Our January issue's "Government's Greatest Hits," a story about a Brookings Institution study by Paul Light, Brookings' vice president and director of governmental studies, is worthy of the incoming political team's attention. The story attracted interest from the national news media, including Washington Post syndicated columnist David Broder. Light's list of the top 50 endeavors undertaken by the U.S. government since World War II, Broder wrote on Dec. 24, offers "a powerful reminder that as much as we fault politics and public officials, it is government that tackles some of the most important and difficult challenges facing this society-and scores some notable successes."

"From the interstate highway system to the space program and from Medicare to welfare reform, only Washington has had the resources and the vision to deal with challenges of this scale," Broder continued "That does not, of course, mean that government is the answer to every problem. But it is a resource that we have used to deal with both crises and persistent problems, and we need to keep it functioning well enough to meet the tests that inevitably lie ahead."

Wrote Light: "If a nation's greatness is measured in part by the kinds of problems it asks its government to solve, the United States measures up very well, indeed." He noted that the great majority of these endeavors have been the product of bipartisan coalitions-from the rebuilding of Europe after World War II (which won the top ranking in Light's survey of historians and political scientists) to fighting disease and discrimination, to containing communism and improving the environment and reducing the federal budget deficit. Some of these problems have been solved, but many are the same old pressing problems still requiring the work of the nation. We can hope they will be pursued in the spirit of conciliation President Bush promised to bring to Washington.