music

Welcome to the commentary magazine Daily Podcast today is Tuesday, August 17th, 2021.

I'm John Pudhortz, the editor of commentary with me as always executive editor Abe Greenwald

Hayab, senior writer Christine Rosem Heykristin, associate editor Noah Rothman, Hi Noah,

and joining us today, big big cheese at the American Enterprise Institute, editor of

National Affairs and author of commentaries lead article in the September 2021 issue

Yuval Levin, how you all thanks for coming back to join us.

Thanks for having me.

We are going to spend much of the day discussing Yuval's article what we got right in the

COVID fight, but before that, obviously we have to talk about the president's speech yesterday

afternoon about the unfolding horror in Afghanistan.

Yuval, one of your main issues as a public intellectual over the last decade has been the crisis

in America when it comes to faith in our institutions.

And it seems to me that obviously the political system as a broadly put as an institution

in the United States is the one that has maybe lost the most faith.

And I think yesterday you saw one of the reasons why in Biden's very peculiar speech in which

he said the buck stops with me and then said that the reason that all this terrible stuff

is happening is because the Afghans stink.

And they stink and they don't know how to be an army and they didn't step up to the

plate like you thought they were gunna and Trump made a bad deal.

And we shouldn't have been nation building in the first place.

And he was handed, you know, I'm sorry to put it this way, a shits sandwich and he is

...