# An Expert Dives Into Why We Only Notice When Government Fails --- **Featured Image:** [Multiple government agency activities including school, postal service, space program and capitol hill] (https://news.archeredu.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/William-Hatcher-Featured-Article-on-Government-Failures.jpg) --- **Author:** Archer News Editor **Published:** May 11, 2026 **Updated:** May 21, 2026 --- Insights from [Dr. William Hatcher] (https://www.augusta.edu/faculty/directory/view.php?id=wihatcher) is Professor of Public Administration and Chair of the Department of Social Sciences at [Augusta University] (https://www.augusta.edu/) . ### **When Government Gets It Right, We Need to Say So** When the Artemis 2 crew completed their lunar flyby earlier this year — sending humans farther from Earth than any mission in more than half a century — something unexpected happened in the public conversation: people felt hopeful. For Dr. William Hatcher, Professor of Public Administration and Chair of Social Sciences at Augusta University, that reaction was not surprising. It was, in fact, exactly the point he has been trying to make for years. "We are hungry for competence in this era of a lot of high-profile incompetence," Hatcher said. And in that hunger, he sees both a warning and an opportunity for the field of public administration. ### **A Field Reckoning With Its Own Blind Spot** For decades, the academic study of government has concentrated heavily on where public institutions fall short. Fraud in social service programs, underperforming school systems, elected officials who break the law — these are the cases that generate research, headlines, and political careers. Hatcher has become one of a growing number of scholars pushing back against that imbalance. His argument, grounded in a paper and a wider movement within political science and public administration, is straightforward: the field has spent too much time cataloguing failure and not nearly enough time studying success. Government, he points out, built the interstate highway system, defeated fascism in World War II, and laid the groundwork for technologies that now feel indispensable — from GPS navigation to real-time weather data. "A lot of things we enjoy of modern life," he noted, are "rooted in something that government helped find, research, or fund." The goal is not cheerleading. It is a rigorous analysis of what works, and why — so that those lessons can be applied more broadly. ### **The Media Cycle and the Negativity Trap** Part of what sustains the perception of a failing public sector, Hatcher argues, is structural. Local news broadcasts open with crime. Social media rewards outrage. Politicians build entire platforms on the premise that government is broken and only they can repair it. The incentives, at nearly every level, point toward amplifying dysfunction. "What grabs people's attention most of the time is when things do not work," he said. Meanwhile, the everyday successes that keep society functioning — the teacher who moves the reading needle in her classroom, the city manager who balances a budget, the postal worker who delivers the mail — go largely unnoticed. "They're there in the background making things work," Hatcher observed, "but we don't pay attention to those successes." --- **Image: An Expert Dives Into Why We Only Notice When Government Fails Image** (https://news.archeredu.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/dr_william_hatcher_quote_card-1024x547.jpg) --- This is the "when it bleeds, it leads" problem applied to public administration, and Hatcher believes it has real consequences for how citizens relate to their institutions. ### **Why Artemis 2 Cut Through the Noise** So what made the Artemis 2 mission different? Why did this particular government achievement manage to break through the ambient pessimism and generate the kind of collective pride more often associated with sports championships or natural disasters narrowly averted? Hatcher's answer is that inspiration operates differently than information. "That kind of action and achievement by organizations, government or private sector, makes us feel like we can do better things," he said. It connects to something deeper than policy approval ratings — a sense that collective effort can still produce extraordinary outcomes. He draws a direct line to the original moon race of the 1960s, which he describes as having "inspired a lot of Americans to believe that we can achieve certain things," even as it was driven by Cold War competition rather than pure idealism. The Artemis mission, he suggests, tapped into the same vein. In a media environment dominated by gridlock and scandal, a rocket carrying humans around the moon offered something rare: unambiguous evidence that institutions can still function at the highest level. ### **What MPA Students Take Into the World** The implications are not just cultural — they are pedagogical. In his leadership course within Augusta University's Master of Public Administration program, Hatcher uses historical case studies of presidential leadership — Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon Baines Johnson — to show students that competent, consequential governance is not an accident. It is the product of deliberate choices made under pressure. "We look at the successes that they had and how they went about having those successes," he explained, "to give students the idea that even these national leaders who were in charge during really difficult times were able to focus on the positive and effect change." The students in those courses are not destined for the White House. They are the city managers, county administrators, police chiefs, and economic development directors who will navigate the unglamorous terrain of local government — the level where most people's daily experience of public institutions actually occurs. For them, Hatcher argues, examples of government working are not just motivating. They are instructional. ### **Building Institutions That Inspire** The broader argument Hatcher is advancing is ultimately about what public administration is for. It is not simply a discipline for managing bureaucracies more efficiently. It is a field with a stake in how citizens understand and relate to the institutions that shape their lives. When scholars, educators, and practitioners focus exclusively on failure, they inadvertently reinforce the narrative that government is not worth believing in. "People are just so hungry for some sense that government — or professionals in almost any organization — are competent," Hatcher said. Artemis 2 provided a moment of that reassurance at a national scale. The challenge now, as he sees it, is to find the same story in the smaller, less cinematic successes that accumulate every day — and to make sure the people training to lead those institutions know how to recognize and build on them. Dr. William Hatcher is Professor of Public Administration and Chair of the Department of Social Sciences at Augusta University, where he teaches in the Master of Public Administration program. His research focuses on government performance, institutional leadership, and public administration education.