Think FDR and Ronald Reagan replaced . They were successful because they allowed for the beginning of unknown TBD changes. Politics are not the problem. The problem is a significant deep social and economic dislocation. Political strife and noisy are not the engines of change. Change is pushed by the need for a new system that works.  Over time a new common sense is put into place and America flourishes.

Rising tensions began when a trade war with England created the massive 1807-09 recession. Then came the War of 1812. To keep pace economically and militarily, the US needed more industrialization and a new social structure.  A larger capital base and increased population would be needed.

Innovation Growth came from the Louisiana Purchase. A need for Northwest Territory settlers brought new roads through Appalachia. Increased immigrants from Ireland were loathed as illiterate violent drunks. Ben Franklin said the Germans immigrants were stupid and swarthy.

Large numbers of immigrants challenge the stability of society and locals would, as always, reacted negatively. This eroding of the existing social order causes much consternation.

Forced into Appalachia, immigrants quickly questioned the apportionment and sale of land controlled by absentee English landlords. The controlling local politicians claimed to be the people's government but they were controlled by a local developing pseudo aristocracy.

The private Bank of the US allowed lots of inflation which made themselves and existing land owners rich, but it hurt most others including settler immigrants. Then a 1819 European financial panic caused large Eastern US bank losses. Investments in foreign Napoleonic War debt lost much.  The in control Founding Fathers were motivated by self-interest. Their political future was in Deep Doo

Political trouble came when the Second Bank of the US. lowered the money supply. Western land values tanked, causing settlers farmers whose mortgages were now greater than farm values, to lose their property. Resulting lower farm production raised Eastern food prices. Depression resulted. 

Hamilton's banking system no longer worked. In 1824 election, Adams II  representing  the English elite tied Jackson, a member of the Scotch-Irishman lower class. The House elected Adams and his inability to allow needed institutional change created his failed presidency.

Summary:
Geopolitics change came with the Louisiana Purchase. This created a need for more settler immigrants.
Ethic change came with the  additions of different immigrant cultures.
Economic change occurred when the Hamilton bank system no longer fulfilled the nations needs. We would have a system reboot or the nation would fragment.

Jacksonian Democracy was next.

Tensions rose from 1819 to 1836, but ended somewhat when the Second Bank of the United States  bank finally dissolved after Jackson's reelection. The continuing need for stable money with stable credit was a cause of the US Financial Panic of 1837. Other causes were a poor wheat crop and another British Financial Crisis. Transitions to new cycles are often long-lasting and cause economic pain.

See Panic of 1857

Before the Civil War, the South could not afford a tariff war and the North wanted tariffs to protect infant Industries. The war destroyed the South while Northern industry increased dramatically. The Midwest had become America's Hartland with many small towns to service American agriculture.

Radical cultural changes caused by the massive import of foreign labor.

The Civil War, financed by the fiat Greenback, eventually led to the Coinage Act of 1873. Greenbacks, not backed by Gold or Silver, supplemented the gold/silver backed dollar.

Metallic backed currency soon left circulation for safe keeping. Confederate debt was useless and the Greenback was almost useless. Inflation helped those in debt, but devastated their creditors. Many were seriously hurt.

Innovative Technology
resulted in massive RR growth.

Prosperous immigrants had clustered in rural areas. Small town merchants replaced Irish/Germans immigrants as the leaders of commerce. These small towns became, a symbols of the virtuous life, But they were stuck with old, now mostly irrelevant, Jacksonian era guidelines. Meanwhile, northern industry was creating new, more appropriate urban guidelines.

Eventually, excess RR growth caused stockholders, many located in Europe, to be wiped out. Many  small  rural banks were also wiped out.

Summary:
Change was needed.
The Jackson era focus on cheap land with moderate inflation was no longer appropriate. Big cities were bringing more immigrants and with them new, more appropriate guidelines.

Small town now set society norms by providing community and morality. They relied on hard work and needed order to maximize trade. Bigotry toward Blacks, Jews and Roman Catholics replaced the past eras bigotry towards Scotts/Irish, Germans and Scandinavians.

Big cities with wealthy industrialist and a large immigrant workforce replaced small town merchants as the center of commerce. This increases industrial success only exacerbated rural distrust.

WW 1 set the stage for a cyclical shift. The fall or exports created the need for customers. America's credit based Consumerism was how capitalism adjusted. The 1920's roared but the consumer bubble ended with a thud. The Great Crash lowered employment and  aggregate demand spiraled downward. The periods high level of production simply could not be sustained.

The Gold Standard era with stable currency was over. Credit had created consumer demand. Now, consumers were disappearing. Hover only understood the past era where a balanced budget and sound money were the answer to economic malaise. Now, more spending based on credit was the solution.

Tensions rose during them 1920's due to the First Red Scare and  social conditions exemplified by the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan.

The era's social foundation
1) an urban industrial class of migrants and their children.
2) Southern whites who suffered from the depression. They had really never economically recovered from the Civil War. Unions allied with big city Democratic  Machines to demand a transfers of wealth from rich to the poor. All this appalled Republicans.

Increased management complexity and loss of focus increased inefficiency. The solutions:
1) reduce labor cost. Many to lose their job were middle aged and would never find an equal pay replacement job. Also. lost were communities service jobs. Many rural communities died.
2) Production facilities relocation to less expensive, often foreign locations. These inexpensive areas also provided product parts and services like customer call centers.

The high growth microchip industry caused job losses, companies to fold, and industries to disappear. Anxiety increased. What were the new job requirement? When would the creative destruction end?

The increase in the Wealth of  Nations from globalization raised two issues
1) How long will the process take?
2) How will the increase wealth be distributes?

In the abstract world of free market capitalism, this price of creative destruction must be paid. People will be hurt. But in the real world of society and politics, where the deposed have more power, the process is often destabilizing. Destabilization peaked in the middle 2010's. Just like there was no way out of the Roosevelt cycle without the Reagan cycle changes so to will there be change out of the Reagan Cycle.

GDP growth has not been reasonably distributed. Too much went to the very top. Change to solve this and other problems was required.

Success of the early Regan cycle led to a surplus of financial capital. Disposition of these excesses went  toward  unproductive, often third world, investments.

Micro chip innovation also took some of ths excess savings but some remained causing lower interest rates. But these lower interest rates were often not available to small business after the 2008 financial crisis.

More importantly, the driving edge of this cultural crisis may be a divergence in values. The existing political crisis increased with the Trumps Presidency as social forces intensified. The next decade will see our last  declining years president methods.  that will not work.   A more open to change president will be elected. They will not know what to do, but it will be new and is required to continue the American Experiment.