Here’s another way to look at things.
Very rarely does the Right or the Left dominate politics to the extent they’d like. There is a vast, nebulous Center out there that holds most of the power and makes most of the important decisions. For those of us on the Right or the Left, the real task is this: move the Center just a little closer to our direction.
If a man of the Right or the Left achieves power, his success is measured thus: when his term is over, have his ideas become mainstream? Are his basic principles so widely accepted that even his enemies don’t dare to reject them completely?
By that token, Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal was a huge success- even those Republicans who loathed the whole concept of the New Deal wouldn’t never dare touch Social Security, and even Jesse Helms grudgingly accepts that the federal government must provide a social/economic “safety net” of some type. Franklin Roosevelt made belief in activist government part of the mainstream. The Center now takes it for granted, and no one who hopes to win high office dares attack it.
Similarly, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher succeeded in moving the Center a little closer to the right. Both have been out of office a long time now, but neither Bill Clinton nor Tony Blair dared to challenge the Reagan/Thatcher legacy of smaller government and lower taxes. When Bill Clinton famously announced that “the era of big government is over,” he was (reluctantly, I’m sure) acknowledging that, for now at least, Reaganism remains triumphant.
Political triumphs are rarely dramatic, and they’re rarely permanent. If an ideologue is lucky, he may alter the terms of debate- that’s often the best he can hope for.
