But surely the biggest lessons of all should have been learned after the Great Depression when Roosevelt's new deal rescued the US from the robber barons and speculators who had run the country into the ground?

And yet the candidates don't seem to invoke his memory all that often.  Have the American people forgotten?  Do they not realise what it took to fix the country last time around.  Are the candidates correctly judging the mood of the electorate when they rule out such a Rooseveltian discourse as part of their campaign strategy?

American public discourse had shown a great art of ignoring some particular issues and questions. That art surely improved in the last decade, with monopolization of the media and further monetarization of electoral process. Big money is behind this art, you may bet.

Don't Americans realize the situation? Why the candidates keep mum on this? For one thing, most Americans are too busy with keeping their jobs, saving their investments and mortgages. If they have time to realize, they are just happy that they are not so hopeless (yet) as others. In their thinking, all that matters is having some competitive advantage somewhere; so long as they do not feel as belonging to the negative half of a Gaussian bell curve of any sort, they prise themselves as certain achievers. As they notice how hard it is to keep "middle" living standards, they respect those at the top tail a lot assuming proportional "hard work". What teachers, preachers, bosses, TV anchors and electable politicians talked relentlessly all the time for 30 years, that gets imprinted deeply. Taking care of anything but your self-interest has become a tabu. Americans may run from "nanny" government with revulsion, but they embraced a dependence on "invisible hand" (whatever it is) fully.

I would say adopted to "political reality" eagerly and well. McCain is not exactly the same man as in 2000, and the Clintons learned to love power interests willingly. Outright discussion of real economic developments and social consequences was tried so long ago that no one know how that works anymore. The best we can imagine is Obama stealthily planning sane economic policies when in the White House. But he is not the favorite of the deciders anyway, and their confidence that Obama can be beaten is growing. Just wait till he gets the nomination...

It's a Welfare State - If You're Rich