Return to American politics almost 40 years ago. The 1988 election was one of the last where normalcy prevailed. There was heated but nonetheless civil(ish) discourse between the presidential candidates, Vice President George H. W. Bush (R) and Governor Michael Dukakis (D). Likewise, only faint mud stains were heaved at VP candidates Senator Dan Quayle (R) and Senator George Bentsen (D). It was the end of Ronald Reagan’s terms, and while there were the requisite attack ads and heated rhetoric, there was nonetheless a sense that the nation, although troubled, was not going to stray too far from the ideals of the U.S. Constitution.

The news media was serving the American people well in its role as guardrails. The familiar, trusted journalists still had tenure at the big three networks, and especially at CBS, where truth was sacrosanct—and reading the list of reporters instilled a sense that the public would receive the fair coverage it had become used to. This longing for normalcy returned as I was looking through boxes of documents packed up as time capsules from the pre-Trumpian age. I stumbled upon this 1988 copy of The Washington Post Magazine. The cover by Brad Holland was one of his sometimes enigmatic jabs at the political circus, and Steve Brodner’s caricatures of Bush comically evoked a necessary oppositional tone. This was the Post before Bezos, when press censorship was not the threat it is in today’s Trumpian world.