Every decade has a political origin story, and for the mess we're living through right now, that story starts in the 1970s.

The oil crisis. Stagflation. The collapse of public trust after Watergate. The rise of supply-side economics. The realignment of the South. Every single one of these threads is still pulling on American politics today — and most commentary acts like history started in 2016.

Here's what most people miss:

The economic consensus broke. For 30 years after WWII, both parties broadly agreed on Keynesian economics. The 70s shattered that. The fight between government intervention and free markets that dominates every election? That's a 1970s argument we never resolved.

Trust in institutions cratered — and never recovered. Pre-Watergate, most Americans trusted the federal government. That number has never returned to those levels. The anti-establishment energy on both the left and right today is a direct descendant of the mid-70s.

Media changed forever. The end of the Fairness Doctrine, the rise of cable news, the collapse of the three-network consensus — the information landscape that makes politics feel insane right now was seeded in this era.

If you want to actually understand what's happening, you have to understand what already happened. That's what The Political Record is about — connecting the past to the present so you're never caught off guard by the news cycle again.