Want change? Things have to get worse to get better

In well-off democracies, it is almost impossible to sell voters on drastic reforms until their nation is in acute trouble.

- Janan Ganesh

I once met a sweet old couple in west Texas who still felt sore at Mr Jimmy Carter. His crime? Enforcing the 55mph (88kmh) speed limit on the nation's roads some four decades earlier.

Bashing the 39th US president, who died on Dec 29, was never just a conservative sport, though. He was a recurring punchline in too. This was harsh on a decent and often far-sighted man whose governing struggles - with inflation, with Iran - were largely outside his control. On the other hand, without that anger, that historic snapping of public patience at the end of the 1970s, there wouldn't have been the corresponding appetite for new ideas. No rage, no Reagan.

I am increasingly convinced of something that we might call the Carter Rule: rich democracies need a crisis in order to change. It is almost impossible to sell voters on drastic reforms until their nation is in acute trouble.

The chronic kind isn't enough. Reaganism was on offer before 1980, remember. Carter himself was something of a deregulator and fresh thinker in office. But the electorate wasn't fed up enough at that stage to entertain a total rupture with the post-war Keynesian consensus. There had to be more pain.

The parallel with Britain in the same period is eerie: an air of malaise, a false start or two at reform, then a galvanising humiliation (the IMF loan of 1976) that at last persuades voters to give carte blanche to Mrs Margaret Thatcher. Things had to get worse to get better.