The seemingly least likely choice was what actually happened, a heterodox revolution that took the worst elements of older programs and combined them into a bizarre “neoliberal” agenda that featured an economy simultaneously laissez-faire and heavily dependent on state spending and occasional federal bailouts; a conservative government, yet one with radical ideals; a rhetoric of probity, but a policy of total fiscal and other indiscipline; Republicans overseeing government bloat while Democrats promoted free trade and the “end of welfare as we know it.” It was ideologically incoherent and it
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