The US has a very robust political culture by modern historical standards - we had a civil war in the 1860s but that still puts us ahead of Western Europe (one of my favorite post titles for French news is "the Sixth Republic Looms"). US political institutions favor deadlock and slow change. We may talk big but as Tom Wolfe put it "Why is it that 'the dark night of fascism' is always falling on America — and always landing on Europe?" We bend but do not break.

Our last three presidents were all modest on domestic matters including the fact that they all favored growth of government at home (if you don't think this is true of "W" just wait five years - the then contemporary common wisdom didn't peg Clinton as a moderate either). The growth of government is a problem for voters due to the calculation problem -- namely that even as voters keep their one-vote-per-person that one vote covers an increasingly large part of their lives. At each election you actually have less control because you are voting for the guy that will add Bag-of-issues A versus the guy who will add Bag-of-issues B. Both guys promise an improvement but neither promise Bag-of-issues Zero -- the fewer laws and taxes that just were.