That first time I was there, I’d turned Mighty Chair into a corner, hunched my shoulders so no one would see me, and called my sister. I later learned that this was the standard “Guess where I’m calling you from?” call that just about every first visitor makes. Press conferences were fun, as much a social gathering as a serious meeting. Meet, greet, and apply the heat, as we called it. But we believed we were acting as the vox populi, the voice of the people.

It didn’t seem possible so much could have changed in such a brief period of time. The easy answer is to blame it on President Trump, who so casually destroyed American traditions and conventions without understanding their importance. But honestly, relations between the White House and the media had begun fraying long before him.

The competition between the cable networks—and between reporters for TV face time—had resulted in a little too much media showboating. Asking probing questions became less important than those gotcha moments. Maybe too many of us card-carrying correspondents had embraced the (Sam) Donaldson Rule: Confrontation makes good TV. The Obama people had been able to handle it; they didn’t like it, but they understood it and learned to deal with it.

Not the Trumpers. None of them. Spicer. Huckabee. Sanders. Conway. What’s her name, the Invisible Woman. The mandatory blonde. None of them. Paranoia had enveloped their West Wing. Every question we asked was treated not only as a challenge, but also as a rebuke. It is inaccurate to claim the media was treated as an enemy; Trumpers appeared to respect America’s enemies far more than the press.

Trump and his people had screwed things up so badly that the Dems had about as much chance of putting the economy back together as the king’s men had with Humpty. The Bidens suffered under the mistaken belief that restoration of traditional government was possible.

The Dems got caught cleaning up the mess, but never figured out how to properly restore the relationship between politics and the media. They assumed we were naturally on their side because they weren’t Trump, and they assumed that until we began calling them on their mistakes. Then we became the enemy again. I remember once being chastised by Senator Klobuchar, who told me, “You’re not helping us do our job.”

Well, yeah, I’d responded, actually that was our job.

The damage done to that traditional relationship had served the needs of Wrightman. During his campaign he had made a big deal of refusing to be interviewed one-on-one, explaining he wanted to speak directly to the American people without any filter.

The appearance of press secretary Eunice Kaufman, finally, took me out of my reverie. I liked Eunice, most of us did. At first the selection of a Jewish grandmother had been criticized as an attempt to further reduce the importance of the office, but Kaufman changed that quickly through the force of her personality. With her platinum-blond bouffant hairstyle, her blue-rimmed glasses and matching nail color, and her omnipresent pearl necklace, set off by a rollicking personality, she became a popular face of the administration. Although she had no previous journalistic experience, she explained that she was quite capable of handling a press room full of “busybodies” because she had raised two daughters, “One’s a doctor and the other one’s one of those fall-down lawyers, who must do okay because she has a pool,” and “a smart boy who maybe could have married better, but you didn’t hear that from me.”