Soaring ambition: one of two statues by Oskar Hansen on the Nevada side of the Hoover Dam, a vast hydroelectric project completed in 1935 under the New Deal

Even before the worst financial crisis since the 1930s bore down on the US this summer, the country seemed poised for an ideological shift. The administration of President George W. Bush was immensely unpopular. Anti-trade and anti-business sentiment was on the rise and both main political parties, in different ways, were responding.