David Brooks:

It was like watching one of these Russian novels. Like, oh, there’s Count Vronsky’s at the ball, and so is Count Volkovsky, and there’s Anna Karenina. She’s also here.

So it was like 30 years of our political lives in one room. And you think of all the drama between them, and I’m just talking about the Clintons, the Obamas, all the internecine, the Pence — it really was. It was like a dramatic novel.

But there is, as Jonathan said, a bit of nostalgia as we look back. And I try to think, I think about this all the time, was the 70s worse or better than now? And I would say, on matters of crime, of divorce rates, of societal breakdown, the ’70s were worse.

But they did have Republican senators who would go to Richard Nixon in the ’70s and say, you need to resign. They did have a political leadership class that is better than our class right now.