Welcome to the bully pulpit from the University of Southern California Center for the Political Future.

Our podcast brings together America's top politicians, journalists, academics, and strategists from across the political spectrum for discussions on hot button issues where we respect

each other and respected truth. We hope you enjoy these conversations.

Good afternoon. I'm Bob Shrum, the director of the Center for the Political Future at USC Dornside.

With me as the co-director of the center and my longtime political adversary

and good personal friend, Mike Murphy. We're here to talk about what happened in that debate the other night.

We'll talk for a while, and then we're going to open it up to your questions. I'll give you my initial

reaction, which is a lot of presidential debates don't

matter that much. By almost all of the polling measures, John Kerry won all three debates

against George W. Bush, and he narrowly lost the election. But sometimes debates, in my view,

critically do matter.

In 1960, I think it was essential for Kennedy in that first debate on national security to cross the threshold of someone who could handle these big issues of foreign policy

when we were at the height of nuclear tensions in the Cold War.

In 1980, I think Ronald Reagan gave an extraordinary performance in that debate with Jimmy Carter,

which she obviously had carefully prepared for.

Kamala Harris prepared for this.

That was obvious.

She was, I thought, masterful might use a less praiseworthy adjutant. She baited Donald Trump

continually. He not only took debate, he eagerly seemed to seek it out. I don't know that it will be

as consequential as 60 was, as 80 was, those first debates. But it has already

had some major impacts. She's raised a lot more money. She now has a cash advantage over Trump

of over $100 million. There are two polls out today that won from Morning Consult, which is used by Politico,

...