A most extraordinary image popped up on my X timeline a couple of weeks ago, one that felt like it belonged to a bygone era. Here were four US political power couples, from both sides of the aisle, grinning alongside one another like it was still the Good Old Days: Bill and Hillary Clinton, George and Laura Bush, Barack and Michelle Obama, Joe and Jill Biden. 

Even the way the photo from the “grand opening” of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago had been captioned seemed to imply time had stopped some time during Obama’s presidency. “To George and Laura, Bill and Hillary — we’re grateful for your friendship, counsel, and devotion to this country,” the 44th American president wrote of his White House predecessors. “And to Joe and Jill, thank you for being on this journey with us,” he continued, addressing his former vice-president and second lady. 

It was as if the past decade had never happened. What President Trump? What “stolen election”? What humiliating Biden presidency? What pandemic? What total collapse of the old world order? 

There was plenty of admiration for this public display of cosy bipartisanship and unity. “It makes me happy that the Bushes showed up as well. Remember what America was like before polarisation? It wasn’t that long ago,” posted Paul Graham, co-founder of the start-up incubator Y Combinator. It seemed to be harking back to a time when American politics still felt sane; when trust in institutions hadn’t completely collapsed; when people could still agree on basic facts; when the peaceful transfer of power was a given. It also represented a vision of what might be possible once again in a post-Trump America: Obama himself stressed that the objective of his new centre was not to “evoke nostalgia for some gauzy, bygone era”, but to “remind us of who we can be, to remind us what’s possible”.

But not everyone seemed quite so nostalgic. For many, this was a reminder of a self-serving, warmongering political establishment detached from the concerns of ordinary Americans. “Here are the four men most directly responsible for the decline of the United States over the last 25 years,” read one of the top comments on X, from a pro-Trump account. To me, the event felt akin to the type of gathering described by Mark Leibovich in This Town, a book published in 2013 about a Washington political establishment that feels quite unrecognisable from today’s polarised, Donald Trump-dominated politics. Leibovich calls it “The Club”; the problem is that once you’re in, it becomes part of your identity and almost impossible to leave. “Membership in The Club becomes paramount and defining. [Members] become part of a system that rewards, more than anything, self-perpetuation.”

It is tempting to see the pre-Trump years as a blissful era of civility and decency, when Americans still had confidence in institutions and liberal democracy was functioning as intended. The fact, however, is that Trump was just as much a product of a broad disillusionment with the political class as he was a cause of its further unravelling. Confidence in government and the media had already plummeted. He didn’t so much win the 2016 election as Hillary Clinton — who we might consider the High Priestess of The Club — lost it.

So the notion that we might be able to return to a political establishment that resembles the one before Trump, before Brexit, and before the proliferation of independent online media, is fanciful. Even Steve Bannon, chief executive of Trump’s 2016 campaign and the man many see as the leader of the populist revolt against The Club, told me recently that “we are hurtling towards a dark era” because of how divided America had become.

The idea of going back to an age in which The Club rules supreme also strikes me as undesirable. Trump has, through a mixture of incompetence, arrogance, self-interest and steady erosion of presidential standards, demonstrated that the way things used to be done was often better. But for all his many flaws, he has also helped to expose some of the ruling class’s hypocrisies.

Perhaps there is a way of recovering some of the virtues of the old political order without succumbing to its vices. Populist movements that veer towards the extremes of both ends of the political spectrum might be having a moment, but they are not the only way forward. The success of figures like New York mayor Zohran Mamdani and the enduring popularity of Senator Bernie Sanders lies just as much in their authenticity and charisma as their politics. The Club doesn’t need to be re-established; politics just needs to feel less like one.