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Notes -
Some alternative arguments:
A lot of the politicians and voters of that era had military service as one of their primary formative experiences. That enculturated them to accept big projects, large hierarchies, central planning, and non-market power in a way that is frankly alien to most Americans today. It's not so much a question of competence as a question of faith in that way of organizing people. Similarly competent people would almost certainly be in business today instead - but post 2008 financial crisis, I suspect that that blithe faith in markets and business no longer a shared, default assumption by smart, competent younger people either (which portends unclear things about the future).
But also, more importantly, their "competence" was in many cases vastly outstripped by their confidence and even hubris, and the resulting disasters are specifically what led to the current lack of faith in government in the first place. If you read, say, "The Best and Brightest" (about technocratic failures and hubris leading to Vietnam) or "Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families" (about technocratic forced busing in Boston in the 70s), you get a really, really clear snapshot of why American faith in big, invasive, confident government collapsed, and why people turned back to markets instead (Gallup and Pew polls captured this collapse of faith in authorities and institutions quite nicely). All those competent politicians were able to get a bunch of bills passed, true, and roll out a bunch of programs, but that didn't mean they were actually competent in terms of being good governmental leaders and sustaining voter support in what they wanted to do, and several of their big programs were astonishing disasters with consequences that are still with us.
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