Ezra has an interesting post about Americans' attitude toward the DMV, how it's so universally negative, yet no one seems to undertake the steps necessary to changing it to a more pleasant experience. Ezra wonders why this is, given that anyone who could reform the DMV would be put on electoral easy street.
Perhaps it's because the problem is not so much with the DMV, but the place it occupies in American culture. Here in Kansas the DMV is far from unpleasant. There's plenty of chairs and even some comfy benches at my local office. There's lots of desks, all of them are always occupied, and the messaging system is constantly calling out new numbers to be served; people don't mind waiting all that much as long as they can see progress. The faceless nameless bureaucrats are unfailingly polite and helpful.
When I've lived in California, in San Diego, Long Beach and Concord, it's been miserable. Utterly packed, ugly buildings with just a few poor souls desperately manning the desks, trying to get through hellish workdays. It's awful foir everyone involved.
Arizona and New Mexico would bothbe , in my experience, about the middle between the extremes of Kansas and California.
The thing is, though, that in every place I've lived, the attitude toward the DMV is exactly the same. It simply doesn't matter if it works well or not, the DMV is a handy cultural shorthand for the Evils Of Government.
This is why, in addition to actually running the government well, we liberals/progressives need to work as hard at changing and forming people's attitudes, regardless of how well a particular agency is run in a particular place, as the conservatives have been for decades now. It's not enough to be right or to do well; we have to convince people that we're right and doing well. The latter does not necessarily follow the former.