There is reason to believe that we may be experiencing the first wave of a tsunami of nostalgia and sentimentality washing over the designated heavy hitters of Washington journalism. First up was Chris Matthews, he of ubiquitous television celebrity, whose “Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked,” published last fall, waxed euphoric over the bipartisan cooperation manifested from time to time in the 1980s by President Ronald Reagan, a Republican, and Thomas P.