> I'm talking about the growth of the modern state, largely post WW2. Which has rarely been partisan.

It's been intensely partisan and intensely sharply ideologically-divided, just as today. What was different during the long realignment from the New Deal through approximately the Contract With America (though definitely progressively weakening during the last couple decades of that period) is that the ideological and partisan divides were not in sync, because of the lack of coherence due to the ongoing partisan realignment.

Because political power players had to manage both conflicts, the tension between their interest in one vs. the other often served to moderate conflict.