Sometimes it takes those who oppose the reforms to consolidate them.

Sometimes it takes those who oppose the reforms to consolidate them:

Each of the three American foundings has come to an end when all parties accept the rules of the new system and agree to abide by them. Often this "ratification" of the institutional revolution takes the form of the election of a president representing a faction that had bitterly fought against the reforms only a few years before. The founding of the first republic, for instance, was ratified when Thomas Jefferson became president in 1800. Many of Jefferson's supporters had fought against the adoption of the 1787 federal Constitution, but when he captured the presidency, they changed their strategy to one of working within the system rather than working to undermine it. A presidential election also marked the ratification of the second republic of the United States, which arose from the carnage of the Civil War and Reconstruction. In this case, southern Democrats acquiesced in naming the northern Republican Rutherford B. Hayes as president in return for the end of Reconstruction in the South. From that time on the southern elite would work using the new rules of Lincoln's second republic. Then the election of 1952 marked the ratification of the third republic, whose framework was built by Franklin Roosevelt and his successor Harry Truman beginning in 1932. Throughout the thirties and forties, many Republicans had bitterly denounced the New Deal for creating a tyrannical federal government. As president, however, Eisenhower signaled the acquiescence of the Republican majority by refusing to undo any major New Deal program.

(Halstead & Lind: p. 211).

Over time, this concept has become a truism of political science. For example, it wasn't until the fiery anti-Communists Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger decided to establish diplomatic relationships with China that most Americans came to accept it. Likewise, it wasn't until Bill Clinton and Tony Blair changed their own party policies that Labour and the Democrats finally accepted the reforms introduced by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, thus allowing them to return to power and move on from there. In the end, the best way to return to power is to accept whatever decisions the opponent took from government that may have improved society as a whole and work not against them but with them, from the newly established position. Or, in other words, the best way to guarantee a safe return to power is from moderate positions, instead of promising to undo what the opponent did.