In September 1973, Elizabeth Drew had an intuition: President Richard Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew would leave office within the year. Drew, who was writing for New Yorker at the time, decided to keep a journal as the year unfurled. A mentor said: “Write it so that forty years from now people can say, ‘So that’s what it was like.’”
What it was like bears an uncanny resemblance to the city we’ve come to know since President Donald Trump took office. An isolated President attacks the media, the establishment is exhilarated and exhausted by a torrent of news, and the city is paralyzed by a relatively minor snow storm.
The quiz below pairs excerpts from Drew’s book Washington Journal, first published in 1975 and reissued in 2014, with descriptions of the Trump administration. Best of luck telling the difference.
Note: Quotes have been edited to change tenses and names that would give away the answer.
Noah Lanard is an editorial fellow. Before Washingtonian, he freelanced for the Guardian, Fusion, and Vice in Mexico City. He was born in DC, grew up in New Jersey, and went to college in Montreal.
