Mark Lilla put forward a similar idea in the _New_York_ _Review_of_Books_ two years ago: "A Tale of Two Reactions", http://www.nybooks.com/nyrev/WWWarchdisplay.cgi?19980514004F Lilla's article is less overwrought than some of the material which he anticipates, and perhaps inspired (or was plagiarized for).
> ... But it's now
> clear, as Schulman argues, that the "the ultimate lesson of Watergate
> remained 'you can't trust the government,' " and that it therefore "gave a
> boost to conservatism and conservative Republican politicians." ....
Yet this outcome need not have been so, had most of the visible Left not been wedded to notions of State power and governmental intervention -- _bourgeois_ State power and _bourgeois_ governmental intervention -- as the solution to almost every problem. And the beat goes on.