(Sorry for the late reply, didn't see your response until now.) So what do you think is a fairer way to measure governments? Ratio of important successes to im

(Sorry for the late reply, didn't see your response until now.) So what do you think is a fairer way to measure governments? Ratio of important successes to important failures? A matrix of weighted policies and implementation scores? You'd probably end up with something similar to to the UN's human development index (http://hdr.undp.org/en/composite/HDI http://hdr.undp.org/en/composite/HDI), in which the US ranks #17, behind Norway, Ireland, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Iceland, Germany, Sweden, Australia, Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Singapore, the UK, Belgium, New Zealand, and Canada. All of those are perfectly livable countries. My only criterion was "developed democracies", and Hong Kong isn't even much of a democracy anymore. I don't think that's an unreasonably high bar. Our government is just on the low end of mediocre compared to other developed democracies, at least by the metrics I can think of. If you can think of a better metric, I'm all ears.