In both of these cases — the Obamacare launch and conservative attempts to defund the program — there were clear signs of trouble ahead. The software and the strategy were obviously flawed, like ice too thin to take the required weight. But politics and ideology compelled smart people to strap on skates and attempt their doomed salchows.

This led to an extraordinary spectacle in the fall. The central appeals of two great political parties were discredited at the same time: health-care politics as a new governing majority, and anti-government populism as the wave of the future. Neither worked out as planned.

So what emerges from these ideological ruins? Perhaps a centrist governing coup, in which the Obama administration and congressional leaders plot immigration reform, measures to encourage economic mobility and major health-care reform revisions? Not likely. While 2013 did end with a budget deal, it was the result of political exhaustion, not ideological innovation.