That may have been a generational thing. Remember that the economic conventional wisdom threw Keynes out with the bathwater during the 1970's stagflation. Pretty much anyone born after 1960 has basically been educated in neoclassical economics or MBA-think, and that's if they have a formal economics education as opposed to what you pick up from pundits, best-selling paperbacks and the guy at the bar. Throw in the "electability" dynamic and you end up with the hegemonic parties of the left putting their economic policy apparatus in the hands of "serious" economists (albeit with the heart in the right - that is, left - place) with, in hindsight, unsurprising consequences.

By laying out pros and cons we risk inducing people to join the debate, and losing control of a process that only we fully understand. - Alan Greenspan