Gingrich was a far more volatile and aggressive individual than Boehner, but the institutional norms of self-restraint, and perhaps even self-interest, have broken down under the pressure of an increasingly abnormal Republican Party.

What goes on in a person's head, what impels them to a political choice, it's a pretty complicated question.

Inequality saps the will to conceive of ambitious solutions to large collective problems, because those problems no longer seem very collective.

Under Bill Clinton we had a roaring economy that looked really good.

Before the nineteen-seventies, most Republicans in Washington accepted the institutions of the welfare state, and most Democrats agreed with the logic of the Cold War. Despite the passions over various issues, government functioned pretty well. Legislators routinely crossed party lines when they voted, and when they drank; filibusters in the Senate were reserved for the biggest bills; think tanks produced independent research, not partisan talking points. The "D." or "R." after a politician's name did not tell you what he thought about everything, or everything you thought about him.

It's kind of funny to read the work of ex-Marines and soldiers because what they said to me as a reporter was only a fraction of what they were thinking and feeling and saying to one another.

I really do put it on Bill Clinton's presidency as the time when the Democrats became the party of the college degree as the key to success in life.