why start with him?....wasn’t it the FOUNDING FATHERS who envisioned this mess of a country?...what with the Supreme court judges having all the power....I blame it on George Washington....if he hadn’t interferred we might still be colonists without rights but we’d be happier...../sarcasm/
Although there were some SCOTUS problems earlier, the atheistic Fabian Progressive Socialists began to emerge as a force around 1900. Before 1900, the federal government wasn't much of an issue in the lives of Americans. Government spending at the start of the 20th century was less than 7 percent of GDP. By the 1920's it had doubled and off we went.
The slow decline of America can be traced in the early 1900's to government's growth and easy access to our money (income tax 16th Amendment in 1913 influenced by Roosevelt who tried to pass a "progressive" income tax a few years earlier).