Matt Welch: We've lived through this period of about six or seven years, where every time Francis is the perpetual pessimist and I'm the perpetual optimist. Every time I finally all this crap is over, something new happens," he says. "I think we're maybe not over-populism, but I think we're sort of in a brief phase, perhaps between moments" He argues that our institutions are now in the hands of a new middle-class graduate elite who hold values different from those held by millions of people out there.