Okay, welcome to the Dispatch Podcast. If you think I'm Sarah Izger, that doesn't reflect

well on either of us. I'm Jonah Goldberg, I am guest hosting this week's Dispatch Podcast

and we're going to do something a little different this week. Last night was the GOP presidential

debate. I think it's fair to say that everybody, it lived down to everyone's expectations.

In fact, exceeded those low expectations and we decided in our fits of despair yesterday

when we were thinking about the current situation that we needed to go a little more big picture

and our big picture guy, actually his official title at the American Enterprise Institute

is Big Picture Guy, is Yuval Levin. Yuval has joined us along with Steve Hayes and

we're going to ease into the pool of despond by talking about last night's presidential

debate and then brought it out to everything from the shutdown to a sort of novel version

of not worth your time where we ask is American politics not worth your time. So let's dive

right in.

Yuval, you watched the debate. I'm grateful to you for watching it because when I asked

you to come on, you said I guess this means I got to watch the debate and last night

while watching it with my wife, I must have said three times, I cannot believe I made

Yuval watch this. So Big Picture, what do you think of last night's GOP debate?

Well, I was going to watch anyway, it is kind of my job, I guess, as I have to tell myself

regularly when these kind of things happen, but I guess I think calling it a presidential

debate is being a little too nice to what that was. It didn't have the feel of a debate

among people who actually think they're going to be president, but I would say it probably

exceeded my very, very low expectations. I think it was better than the first debate.

It was more substantive. Everybody seemed to learn some lessons from what they did wrong

...