Part of writing is figuring out whether you have anything interesting to say. I'm following the shutdown as much as the rest of you. But it's not my lane. I should not pretend otherwise. With that said, a couple of hits.
Check out Terry Gross interviewing Robert Draper a few years back. You can see the seeds of today in Draper's reporting:
GROSS: You're writing a book about the House. So I'm wondering if watching how the House dealt with, you know, passage of this debt ceiling deal, if a lot of members of the House now admire President Obama for his willingness to compromise with them or if they just see him as weak and easy to take advantage of.Mr. DRAPER: I haven't seen any sign of admiration for President Obama in the Republican camps. If anything, there is a belief that President Obama was not always good on his word at the negotiating table.There was this suggestion that another $400 billion in revenue should be considered that President Obama sort of sprung on Speaker Boehner, which he felt was untenable, given how — the difficulties he was having in his Republican conference to convince them to accept any kind of revenue package.No, I don't see that any of them have viewed Obama's willingness to compromise as a virtue. I think that they recognize it, but they don't see this as something to be admired or even to be emulated. I think that if anything they've calculated it as a kind of weakness.
And as always, my colleague Jim Fallows is on it. I'd add in this interview with National Review's Robert Costa on what motivates John Boehner. Otherwise, it's yours. Leave the magic. Bring us science.