On the menu: Trust fall; Mule mail; Greene at the gills; Beshear not bashful; The _____ Nate Moore

America’s obsession — or at least the American media’s obsession — with the election process that gave the world Pope Leo XIV has been intense. It’s been great #content. I mean, Cardinal Pizzaballa? How could they resist?

And the surprise result of the first-ever American pope delivered a shocking conclusion that not even Hollywood could match.

For politics watchers, it was especially appealing since a papal conclave is a perfect example of a high-stakes election inside a closed system. The Roman Catholic Church chooses its leader the way American political parties used to choose their presidential nominees at conventions. The electorate is tiny, supercharged by its members' own considerations, deeply invested in the outcome and engaged in intense bargaining. Things get weird and outcomes become very hard to predict. Sometimes you get Abe Lincoln, sometimes you get Franklin Pierce, but there’s no pollster to tell you what to expect.

It’s all understandably fascinating to Americans who swell and bob on an ocean of odds, projections, forecasts and simulations about everything from college sports to presidential elections.

And certainly for American Catholics themselves, it's been a moment to reflect on the direction of their church and their place in it. Despite lots of energy on the conservative wing of the American branch of the church from folks like Vice President Vance, the liberal-leaning Pope Francis seems to be popular with U.S. Catholics, with three-quarters of respondents in a recent poll saying they thought he led the church in the right direction.

Even if that number is inflated by warm feelings about the late pope so soon after his death, it certainly doesn’t suggest any widespread backlash to a more progressive pope. It would be reasonable to guess that the most ardent and engaged members of the faith in America skew more traditional and orthodox politically and theologically, but we........

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