How many Americans would support a party which stood for good government? Just imagine it: a plan to get schools working, to hold police and other public employees accountable, to cut red tape in healthcare ($1 trillion wasted) and infrastructure permits (doubling the cost), and, generally, to re-empower Americans to take responsibility again.

Relatively few votes can swing elections, as Democrats learned in 2016. That’s why it seems odd that there’s virtually nothing in the Democratic platform about making government work better.

Expanding healthcare coverage is an important public goal, as Democrats are saying at their convention. But how can the country pay for it?

Schools across America are scrambling to figure out whether and how to reopen. Complying with the rigid bureaucratic structure of union requirements and government regulations is impossible.

This week Sen. McConnell is proposing a new stimulus, with strings. What’s missing, we think, is a principled vision for a new social contract for dealing with pandemics. Here’s our proposal in The Hill.

America’s schools were already mired in red tape before COVID-19. Now a system unable to adapt to predictable daily challenges must innovate with distance learning and distancing protocols.

Last week, the Trump administration announced new regulations to streamline infrastructure permitting. Citing Common Good’s report, "Two Years, Not Ten Years," the new regulations put presumptive limits on size (300 pages) and time (two years) of environmental reviews.

Accountability is key to fixing broken government. Accountability is vital to public trust, and also to a healthy internal public culture. Nothing is more corrosive to a department than the knowledge that personal performance doesn't matter. Why go the extra mile if others don't? Like a leak in a tire, energy and pride quickly go flat.

Who has a coherent vision for better government? Good leadership is vital but not sufficient. The current framework frustrates everyone.

The Washington cocktail of paralytic bureaucracy and polarized politics has stalled the rebuilding of America's decrepit infrastructure for over a decade. Now would be a good time to get off the dime. A million or more jobs — mostly outdoors — would be a great path for helping the economy recover from the COVID shutdown.