John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge

Fifty years ago, Lyndon Johnson unveiled his vision of the “Great Society”. This would be one in which no child would go unfed and no youngster unschooled; a society in which the ancient evils of racism and injustice would be combated; a society, above all, in which the state would deliver justice and opportunity.

Most anniversaries pass unnoticed, and rightly so. But this one matters. The era of the Great Society was perhaps the last time Americans thought government could improve their lives. The 1964 election pitted Johnson against Barry Goldwater, an unapologetic advocate of a minimal state. Johnson won in a landslide.

The 1960s were also the heyday of the European welfare state, first outlined by Fabians such as Beatrice and Sidney Webb. Their ideas at first failed to take flight in America. But after the Great Depression and the collectivist success of the second world war, state planning was finally in fashion. Johnson’s Great Society was the Democrats’ version of the British Labour party’s New Jerusalem. Even the phrase, the “Great Society”, was stolen from a British Fabian, Graham Wallas.

Today US politics is in a stalemate and the “big government liberalism” of Johnson is in retreat. Ever since the 1970s, when the Great Society began to lose its “wars” on poverty, crime and inequality (and North Vietnam), American voters have embraced conservatives such as Ronald Reagan, who said government was the problem, not the solution; and Democrats such as Bill Clinton, who proclaimed the era of big government over. Only one in 10 Americans trusts politicians to do the right thing, compared with 60 per cent in Johnson’s time.