When Americans in 1978 heard that “government cannot solve our problems, it can’t set our goals, it cannot define our vision,” the words didn’t come from Ronald Reagan. They came from President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, in his State of the Union address.2 This was a preview of things to come. In 1996, the next Democratic president, Bill Clinton, announced that “the era of big government is over.”3 The notion that the US government cannot solve America’s problems was not unilaterally produced by Reagan and the GOP. It was coproduced by both parties and reinforced by their leaders.
