On "Face the Nation" today, the panelists seemed to be playing a game called: Talk about Trump as much as you can without talking about Trump.

The moderator was John Dickerson, and his actual question was: "You are an assignment editor. And you have to assign coverage for the year 2017. How do you deploy your forces? What’s the story?" Obviously, the story you've got to cover is President Donald Trump. But they're not going to say Well, duh, John, we've got to cover the damned Trump presidency.

Our first contestant is Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic:

JEFFREY GOLDBERG:  Well, the story is-- there’s one overarchingly huge story. A very big league story, as Michele might say. The-- the-- the story is-- the-- the story is the upending of American politics. The story is of the outs coming in and the ins going out. --The story is trying to explain to the American people what’s happened to their two main parties. And-- and the deeper story, also, I don’t want to forget this -- the deeper story is globalization, and technological disruption, and anxiety born of-- of rapid change, rapid, destabilizing change, the fragility of institutions. All of that is-- is there undergirding the larger, more immediate story, which is how did Donald Trump become president of the United States....

Bzzz. Goldberg mentioned Donald Trump. He had a great run going — the outs coming in and the ins going out... anxiety born of-- of rapid change, rapid, destabilizing change, the fragility of institutions... Great stuff. There's overarching and undergirding — construction to go along with the destruction. It was mindbending. I was ready to give him the prize, but then he said the name. Wipe out.

Let's get the next contestant up here. Michele Norris, a journalist affiliated with something called the Race Card Project: