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Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest for Friday, August 19th.

I'm Emily Bazelon. I am here in Washington, yay, with John Dickerson, who's just back from Iowa,

and I'm hosting so that we can interrogate him more successfully.

And we have a special honored guest today. David Leonhardt is joining us from New York Times, and we're so glad that you're here with us.

Thank you. It's great to be here. It's another David, but a David who actually has, like, opinions grounded in reporting in fact and knowledge.

Yeah, some of our Facebook fans made that point as well today.

We miss our friend plots, so it shouldn't be making fun of him.

So how was Iowa?

Tell us your impressions.

You've been following Rick Perry around.

He wowed you.

You're ready to go.

I don't know.

Well, he wound me because, you know, this race has been so kind of plotting and boring.

And suddenly between Thursday night's debate in Ames, you know, this race has been so kind of plotting and boring.

And suddenly between Thursday night's debate in Ames and Saturday afternoon, you had one new candidate in Rick Perry.

You had Pawlenty dropping out.

He dropped out Sunday morning.

And then you had Michelle Bachman as the frontrunner in Iowa.

So you had like suddenly it just rocketed into this new, into this new gear. And the Perry show for three days in Iowa, he started in South Carolina, then went to New Hampshire, to Iowa, New Hampshire, back to South Carolina.

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