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Roosevelt’s reward for crafting the broad coalition was to become the most popular president in US history. He won four consecutive elections, prompting the Republicans to pass a law limiting all future presidents to two consecutive terms. He overcame the limits to his federal employment program when World War II enabled him to provide jobs to the remaining unemployed millions either as military personnel or in private enterprises producing for the military. The war, like the New Deal, provided some immediate benefits to employers and workers alike. The cumulative traumas of depression and war, from 1929 to 1945, profoundly shaped US history thereafter. The political, ideological and psychological commitments to a welfare-state capitalism were so vast and deep that it could not be questioned, let alone overturned. However, its opponents became more, not less, determined to do exactly that. On the one …