Former First Lady Barbara Bush, matriarch of the Bush political dynasty, died last week at the age of 92. In the days since her passing, there has been an outpouring of remembrances about her life, all tinged with a nostalgia for a better time in America. Even among people who didn’t support the Bush presidency (the first or the second), there was a shared sense that something important had been lost.

George and Barbara Bush are indeed reminders of a kinder, gentler Republican Party that has been eclipsed by the rise of the Trump. But the elder Bushes are also a reminder of how the GOP got to the state it is in today, not only because they show how more moderate politicians capitulated to conservatives, but also because they remind us of how stultified and insular the political establishment had become.

The Bushes had a reputation for both public service and personal kindness. Barbara Bush earned her encomia for her work on literacy and her compassion, in an era that offered very little, towards gay Americans dying in the AIDS epidemic. She won a reputation as both warm and blunt, able to put a person at ease but also able to cut through any hint of artifice or flattery with a sharp (and often witty) rebuke.

Her husband, likewise, is remembered as a reasonable, amiable man, who perhaps didn’t have his wife’s star power, but nonetheless governed in a responsible way, even reversing his pledge not to lower taxes when it became clear that a tax hike was needed to offset the exploding deficits of his predecessor.

Indeed, the Bushes should be understood as the last gasp of the moderate Republicans. Barbara Bush supported the Equal Rights Amendment — a proposed-but-never-passed amendment to the constitution guaranteeing equal rights for women — as well as being publicly pro-choice. George H.W. Bush was also liberal on reproductive rights. He so vocally supported Planned Parenthood and contraception access that he earned the nickname “Rubbers”.