Whomever told you that all government projects are failures is lying to you. In fact, the government fails at a lower rate than private industry. Analyze the motives of your sources of information for clues as to their agenda. Do it for everyone, not just whatever you consider to be the opposition.
when i was a wee tot, so many decades ago, failure was always a possibility and it was acknowledged. the winners went home with trophies, applause still ringing in their ears, and losers were given something to strive for next time around. the efforts of the losers were recognized, but the applause was reserved for those who excelled. as the years went by, the losers started receiving trophies of their own and were applauded simply for showing up. everyone was special and deserved to be treated as a winner, no matter how badly they sucked. well that same philosophy has invaded our entire culture, so it's no wonder you haven't the faintest idea what the difference is between success and failure. take a good look at nearly every government run program and you'll get an idea of what it is we used to call failure.
why don't we start with a big one, the welfare state. originally designed as a stop-gap to keep the wolf at bay while folks got back on their feet, it has expanded constantly to become a major drain on our economy. in order to ingratiate themselves with that all important voter bloc, the poor, political animals have continually expanded payouts and made it easier and easier to qualify for benefits. they have even all but eliminated the stigma of being "on the dole", normalizing dependence and practically making a virtue of taking money for doing nothing. instead of being a temporary situation, collecting welfare payments has become a way of life for millions of americans. can you honestly consider the creation of the federal plantation to be a success for government?
next we should probably take a look at education. led by a series of federal initiatives, we pay more than most other civilized nations to educate our young and do the worst job of it. the worse our students perform, the more we spend on the least of them. those incapable of excelling and those who simply don't care are using up a disproportionate amount of the available funding, while those who might become great are brought down to the level of the mediocre. the system itself is so top heavy that the students themselves are the last to see any increase in funding. it instead goes to a complex administrative bureaucracy that concerns itself more with political correctness and the appearance of success than with actual education.
even our defense, the prime duty of the state, is a picture of incompetence. we demand our troops conduct themselves with a reserve that places them at a distinct disadvantage. though they are the best equipped force in the world, the contract process through which we acquire these weapons and supplies is rife with corruption and incompetence. our armed forces are directed into often foolhardy conflicts, usually for the express purpose of enhancing the reputations of political animals that couldn't care less how many lives are lost or what the end result of our efforts really is. all the while, the cry goes out to reduce military funding, while continuing to play policeman to an increasingly unappreciative world.
the best example of failure may be the operation of our government itself. we begin with our elected officials whose prime duty has become to divide the electorate into easily managed classes, each of which is told the appropriate lies to make themselves feel better about themselves. next comes the multitudes of petty bureaucrats. the duty of each of these is to carve out their own fiefdom and enhance it by any means possible. often conflicting or redundant, these fiefdoms perform the heavy lifting of enacting and enforcing the often nonsensical and always excessive legislation through which our society becomes so complex that it strangles itself. finally we have the millions of governmental "employees". having gained the right bargain collectively with themselves, they have become the most over-paid and under-worked group in history. this is all a recipe for the grand failure. gone are the days of the citizen statesman. today's politician is an insulated member of the ruling elite, doted on by an army of sycophantic underlings and spending his entire life campaigning for the next position. the reality of the electorate is represented to these people
(and i use that term loosely) by polls and reports handed to them by underlings with their own agendas.
all of the above is but a brief sketch of the portrait of governmental failure. some of it is simply inherent in every system of governance, much of it is specific to the over-centralization which we have become prey to. the advent of progressivism brought about an abrupt acceleration in the process of incompetence and corruption and our current infatuation with collectivism has sent us careening along the express lane to hell. we have lost track of some rather simple truths. chief among these is that society and the government that represents it is a fantasy. the individual is what is real. it is the individual that is of the utmost importance - all individuals. society is dependent upon the individual, not the other way around.