

The dome of the U.S. Capitol is surrounded in scaffolding while undergoing restoration. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

"I kinda like the way the Capitol looks."

It seemed fitting that the first thing I'd hear after leaving the National Archives on Thursday night was someone approvingly noting the U.S. Capitol's new style. The dome is completely surrounded by scaffolding, which make it seem like the 150-year-old home of Congress is wearing braces. It's not the most stunning of attire, but part of the attraction is knowing how the building will look when it's done. The thousands of cracks that have threatened to ruin it will be fused back together. The Capitol will be fixed, and all those who exist under it won't be crushed by debris.

Just moments earlier, the inspired man in front of me was at the Archives listening to all the reasons why no such restoration projects had been promised for the legislative body underneath that dome. The wisdom, naturally, was being doled out by those who had left Congress behind.

The evening panel was called, "Congressional Drama: Midterm Election Analysis." The five people on stage, all members of the U.S. Association of Former Members of Congress, had been out of Congress a total of 26 years. They were first asked whether they missed being in Congress. The people who had been gone the longest, former House member Barbara Kennelly (D-Conn.), and the shortest, ex-Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle (R-N.Y.), both said that they did miss it. The three men on the panel said they enjoyed it while they were there, but, no, thank you. "I think it would be a difficult place to be now," said former House member Martin Frost (D-Tex.), who lost reelection in 2004.

You can read about why in his book, which comes out in January and was mentioned frequently during the 90-minute event, which was attended by interns, former members of Congress and the type of people who enjoy going up to the microphone at panels to deliver soliloquies instead of questions. Frost co-wrote his book with ex-Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.), who retired in 2009 and shook his head whenever Frost invoked the title of the book, "The Partisan Divide: Congress in Crisis." "Martin," Davis said, "you're shameless."

The appetite for solutions to fix government is ravenous. "Dissatisfaction with government" has polled as one of the top problems facing the country for months. Congressional approval is at historic lows. And yet, the literature for how to fix it, written by those banished, redistricted out of or fed up with the institution, has never been more plentiful.

Op-eds from former politicians litter newspapers across the country. In October, Esquire did a feature titled, "How to Fix Congress Now." It featured 22 reforms masterminded by former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), former congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), former would-be-House-speaker Bob Livingston (R-La.), former Senate majority leader Trent Lott (R-Miss), and former top congressional aide and current MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell. The ideas make sense, and tend toward small details instead of sweeping ambitions, but are divorced from the politics that prevented them from being implemented in the first place.

That's the general theme of the post-Congress guide to Congress. Once you remove the fundraising, the campaigning, the interest groups and emotions from it all, governing is easy.

Nostalgia reigns above all in the former member of Congress' political first aid kit. When Kennelly was in the House, she noted, "we worked together, and it worked." Mentions of Tip O'Neill outnumbered mentions of John Boehner, as those who worked with the late speaker of the House wished he had been sentenced to serve until the end of time.

Frost said immigration and tax reform would be the two big legislative issues that required presidential leadership in the next two years. He recounted how it happened the last time, when he was in Congress in the '80s. He also remembered 1996, when even President Bill Clinton and Speaker Newt Gingrich were able to compromise on a few issues, which helped House Republicans and the president in that year's election.

Frost did not mention that, while he was chairing the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee that year, a DCCC fundraising appeal accused Gingrich of promoting "the policies of a terrorist," which shows how the DCCC's fundraising has evolved, in a strange way, despite its parade of desperate emoji. When discussing the growth of partisan media outlets, Davis remembered the days when facts were facts and Walter Cronkite told them. Former congressman Dennis Cardoza (D-Calif.) spoke fondly of his Blue Dog colleagues, which "are nearly an extinct species."

Everyone on stage who had been in Congress when earmarks reigned swooned when the subject came up. "It's a 185-year-old tradition," one said. The event was cordial, the audience was laughing, and the people on stage would interrupt each other to say, "I totally agree with you," "I don't disagree with that," "You're right."

They were working together, and it worked. They also weren't elected officials anymore, and their conversation was freighted with no more import than a happy hour conversation with old co-workers.

One audience member stood up to say, in disbelief, "You all make sense out of office." He said that a congressional amendment should be passed that would allow elected officials to serve two years, take a break, and then come back to office.

Which would change absolutely nothing. While they are unquestioned authorities on their time-capsuled terms and the macro-level problems plaguing Congress, their analysis of today wasn't quite as enlightening. The problem with President Obama, the panelists say, is that he is bad at small talk. Did you hear that Texas may go blue by 2020?

Basically, if Congress can be fixed, the solution isn't about to come from those who helped create, sometimes unintentionally, the new variables that make working there so difficult now. After Tuesday's election, the newest class of former members of Congress is set to retire, and many of them mentioned nostalgia as a reason for their decision to go, which will serve them well as they transition into their new role of remembering the old days.

When Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) announced his retirement in January, a former aide said that Congress had lost its appeal. “He talked about how the climate is now, compared to 10 years ago," the aide said. "Particularly with the tea partiers; he said they don’t even make eye contact with you. It just makes it less fun.”

Why didn't they decide to stay in Congress and try to fix it, instead of joining the tsk-ing horde? The truth is that Congress will never go back to the way it was in the 1980s or the '90s, and it will soon become a new thing -- in some ways better than the old thing, in some ways worse -- that may even send the members of the 113th Congress reminiscing.

Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid will be able to sit on a stage, laughing and reminding us in 2026 of that time in October 2013 when they brought America back from the brink after two and a half weeks of a government shutdown.

Why can't the current Congress be more like that?