American exceptionalism is a sturdy if contested trope of cultural analysis. But large shifts in US politics since the end of World War II have been anything but exceptional. Rather, the US has moved in tandem with other Western democracies. In the three decades after 1945, democracies on both sides of the Atlantic built systems of social provision and protection, which Europeans call social democracy and Americans the welfare state. A broad consensus across party lines supported this policy. Starting in the mid-1970s, this political phase slowed in the face of rising concerns about the impact of an interventionist government on public finances and private-sector growth. The Crisis of Democracy, a much-discussed 1975 report by the nonpartisan expert conference known as the Trilateral Commission, voiced fears of democratic overload -- public demands exceeding the capacity of government to finance and administer social programs. That an event has never happened is no guarantee that it will not happen.