Fareed Zakaria: “The death of George H.W. Bush has occasioned a fair amount of nostalgia for the old American establishment, of which Bush was undoubtedly a prominent member. It has also provoked a heated debate among commentators about that establishment, whose membership was determined largely by bloodlines and connections. You had to be a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant to ascend to almost any position of power in the United States until the early 1960s. Surely, there is nothing good to say about a system that was so discriminatory toward everyone else?”

“Actually, there is. For all its faults — and it was often horribly bigoted, in some places segregationist and almost always exclusionary — at its best, the old WASP aristocracy did have a sense of modesty, humility and public-spiritedness that seems largely absent in today’s elite. Many of Bush’s greatest moments — his handling of the fall of communism, his decision not to occupy Iraq after the first Gulf War, his acceptance of tax increases to close the deficit — were marked by restraint, an ability to do the right thing despite enormous pressure to pander to public opinion.”

“But, and here is the problem, it is likely these virtues flowed from the nature of that old elite. The aristocracy was secure in its power and position, so it could afford to think about the country’s fate in broad terms, looking out for the longer term, rising above self-interest — because its own interest was assured.”

USA Today: “Since Washington’s death, the loss of one of its former leaders has united America in a way few other events can. Americans tend to put political animosity aside and to momentarily forgive a president’s faults, to honor the fallen leader and to celebrate the shared history reflected in his time in office.”

“Each president’s death since Washington has been commemorated with that solemnity and tragedy, though the specifics and form of the memorial have evolved and varied according to the wishes of the president and his family. Still, a general framework for presidential funerals has formed over time.”

CNN: “One document released Wednesday showed a series of charges drawn up against Nixon, who was never formally charged for crimes in the Watergate scandal and was pardoned by President Gerald Ford after he resigned.”

“The document is a draft, as noted in handwriting in the upper right-hand corner of the first page, dated February 1, 1974, a month before Nixon’s co-conspirators were indicted.”

“The draft indictment showed that a grand jury planned to charge Nixon with bribery, conspiracy, obstruction of justice and obstruction of a criminal investigation. A month later, seven of Nixon’s aides were charged with conspiracy and six were charged with obstruction of justice, but none were charged with bribery.”

The National Archives just released the famed — and long mysterious — “Watergate Road Map,” which the special prosecutor sent to Congress in 1974.

The document has been under seal since March 1, 1974.

President Trump defended holding a campaign rally last night, hours after 11 people had been murdered in a Pittsburgh synagogue.

With what happened early today, that horrible, horrible attack in Pittsburgh, I was saying maybe I should cancel both this and that. And then I said to myself, I remembered Dick Russell, a friend of mine, great guy, he headed up the New York Stock Exchange on September 11th, and the New York Stock Exchange was open the following day. He said — and what they had to do to open it you wouldn’t believe, we won’t even talk to you about it. But he got that exchange open. We can’t make these sick, demented, evil people important.

However, as the Washington Post reports, the stock markets “never opened for trading the morning of the attacks and were closed until Sept. 17 — the longest shutdown since 1933.”

And Dick Grasso was the head of the New York Stock Exchange. Dick Russell “was a senator from Georgia, known as a fierce defender of segregation.”

“It all goes back to the Civil War.”

— Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), quoted by the New York Times, on his state’s political divisions.

This is pretty great: An interactive map of U.S. House election results from 1840 to 2016.

“A federal judge has ordered the partial release of a Watergate report that fueled an impeachment drive against President Richard Nixon and could serve as a precedent for a similar effort aimed at President Trump,” Politico reports.

“The transmission to Congress more than four decades ago included a bare-bones summary of evidence from various witnesses, as well as supporting documents contained in a bulging olive-colored briefcase that prosecutors gave Judge John Sirica. The information detailed what the grand jury discovered about the Watergate break-in and Nixon’s involvement in subsequent efforts to cover it up.”

New York Times: “Brute partisanship in the Senate is a symptom of a much larger national contagion. To the right and left alike, Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination appears less like a final spasm of division — a sobering trauma, followed by calm resolution — than an event that deepens the national mood of turbulence. The country is gripped by a climate of division and distrust rivaled by few other moments in the recent past.”