You Were in a Car Crash and You Lost Your Hair
Here's a chilling experiment: compare the average quality of all Beatles-era Ringo-authored songs (What Goes On, Don't Pass Me By, Octopus's Garden) with the average quality of the songs on Wingspan.
That said, Ringo, in the space of the Beatles entire recording career, possessed a mere three songs to display his songwriting prowress. These were doubtlessly the best of the crop which Ringo produced. To compare the peak of Ringo's material to the average quantity of the whole of Paul McCartney's solo work is a bit unfair because it stacks the deck in Ringo's favor.
Namely, I think that the comparison proves that poor songs recorded well are generally better than good songs recorded poorly. The problem with Paul McCartney's material is not so much that the material is poor, but that the quirkiness and small turns of genius that brightened the silliness of McCartney's songwriting with the Beatles are, in his solo work, replaced with dated keyboards and arrangements. A song, for instance, like "With a Little Luck" is absolutely intolerable for this very reason--the minor harmonies and upbeat lyrics of the chorus would pose an interesting and compelling contrast if not backed by something that sounds vaguley like my keyboard's "synth 2" sample.
On the same token, Ringo's Beatles songs (with the possible exception of "Octopus's Garden") would be lucky to be relegated as filler on most albums. However, with the Beatles unqiue and ingenious production, their stars manage to shine bright enough to outshine most material.
The bottom line is that the Beatles could take almost anything and make it near genius, and the solo careers of each Beatle basically proved that that magic is extinguished when the four work separately.
That said, I also think that the song "What Goes On" is not better than anything on Wingspan, except maybe the unfortunate "Girlfriend" or "Rockestra."
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As for "the peak of Ringo's material" versus "the whole of Paul McCartney's solo work", I will point out that Wingspan is a greatest hits/history collection while I included all of Ringo's material for which there are recordings. Do I think "What Goes On" is a great song? No, but I included it anyway specifically to avoid stacking the deck. And even though I haven't heard them all, I can state with utter conviction that there are songs in Paul McCartney's solo catalogue which are far, far more insipid than anything on Wingspan.
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The question which remains is: how far could this go? If the Beatles were here to arrange and record some of the poorer hit songs of today, which could be rescued from the depths of the deepest puddle of mudd?
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However, I'm not sure we can indeed say that they have the power to increase the general musical goodness of any song. What about the cover songs that the Beatles actually made worse (Please Mr. Postman, Twist and Shout, etc.)? Their knowledge of early American r&b is one of the crucial factors that made the Beatles a great rock band, yet their own versions of these songs are consistently inferior to the originals. My own suspicion is that for "the Beatles treatment" to fully work, it might have to come into play before the writing process is entirely finished.
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I may have been overbroad when I said that the Beatles could increase the general music goodness of any song. I didn't mean to include all songs that were already good in the first place, although some good songs would doubtlessly be better if played by the Beatles, or at least interesting. For instance, I can imagine some good Beatles covers of Smashing Pumpkins songs, but I can't imagine that they would be so good that I would throw away my originals...
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