I don't know if it's centrism that enabled infrastructure, so much as the two major parties seeing each other as legitimate rivals that could be negotiated with

I don't know if it's centrism that enabled infrastructure, so much as the two major parties seeing each other as legitimate rivals that could be negotiated with. Without a common enemy since the Soviet Union disintegrated, the parties have lost their sense of mutual legitimacy. There's nothing visibly* urgent enough to push us into e.g. building a continent-spanning system of highways. *Climate change doesn't count because one side doesn't see it as a threat.