Desire is, by nature, childlike and chary of government.
Politicians knew what homilies they had to repeat to be taken seriously by party gatekeepers and thus rise to prominence.
In the 1990s, encomiums to the Constitution were taken for granted.
Both parties had committed to the basic elements of what became “the American model.” At home, it involved a modest welfare state combined with meliorism on issues of race. Abroad, the goal was the reconstruction of foreign societies on American terms through the spread of market capitalism and the legal-political institutions of liberal democracy.
As opposed to those of its global adversary, they contended, the interests of America were coterminous with the world’s interests.
