Obama and Romney are back, and show how American politics have changed for the worse

Former President Barack Obama and ex-Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney -- two old rivals who waged a tough election campaign that year -- are creating a fleeting vision of what even a marginally functioning Washington might look like.

Obama made his first post-presidential trip to the White House Tuesday and showed he'd not lost a political step, telling demoralized Democrats -- worried about a possible midterm election shellacking -- to buck up and remember what political power is for.

Meanwhile, Romney -- now a Utah senator -- is suddenly turning into an old school Capitol Hill powerbroker. He plans to break with most of his GOP colleagues and vote for Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson based on the throwback rationale that she's qualified. Romney is also in the thick of a bid to forge a compromise on Covid-19 funding, for which he's earned some rare praise from the White House.

"It feels like the good old days," beamed President Joe Biden in the East Room of the White House, where cheers for Obama lifted the gloom of Democrats at an event promoting the current White House's expansion of the Affordable Care Act.