Baby Boomers had it good, historian David Goldfield says. The decades immediately following World War II saw true government for the people – a cascade of legislation during the Truman, Eisenhower, and Johnson administrations that changed how and where people lived, their access to higher education, and their stewardship of the environment. There were historic efforts to level the playing field for minorities, for women, for immigrants.

As evidenced by today’s government dysfunction, it didn’t last. In a discussion of his new book The Gifted Generation, Goldfield looks back at a time when our elected leaders worked “to extend the pursuit of happiness to a broader population” and how that ideal has dimmed since the 1970s and ’80s.

Goldfield is a professor of history at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte.