So the hardworking staff trundled over to the International House of Politics Tuesday evening and here’s what we found:

The Shorenstein Center’s “Discussion with John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, authors of Game Change.” (Video not available at post time.)

Heilmann (D-New York),  Halperin (D-TIME), and moderator Susan Milligan (D-Boston Globe) were engaging, entertaining, and often enlightening.

Representative samples:

• When asked about their numerous confidential sources, Heilmann invoked Richard Ben Cramer’s monumental What It Takes, and said, “No one has taken issue with the facts in our book.”

• Heilmann: “John Edwards brought a lot of  things to the race but one thing he did not forget to bring was the crazy.”

• The seeds of Barack Obama’s current problems were sown in his presidential campaign. Obama’s professorial sensibility, confidence, small band of close advisors, and reluctance to change course – all asset in the 20o8 race – have not served him well in the White House.

• As for those vile calumnies that Game Change is all about political gossip, Heilmann defended the book as a chronicle of the “high human drama of politics,” while Halperin emphasize that the content was a “judicious and empathetic retelling of marital relationships”  (John and Elizabeth Edwards, Bill and Hillary Clinton, John and Cindy McCain) that were central to the 2008 presidential campaign.

Your punchline goes here.