Donald Trump explains another truth so obvious an idiot would agree with him.

The first Republican National Committee-sanctioned debate of the 2016 campaign is only three days away, but not every candidate will make the cut. Fox News announced that it would only invite the ten best-polling candidates from the field of 16, which sounds like maybe too many anyway, unless you happen to work for the Bobby Jindal campaign. “Whatever happened to the idea of freedom?” Jindal consultant Curt Anderson wrote of Fox’s plan. “Or democracy?” Soon every sentence uttered by a Republican on any subject will contain the word “freedom” and be in the past tense. Possibly coincidental to the demise of robust argument, Jindal, Lindsay Graham, and Ricks Santorum and Perry are all out of the top ten in NBC’s aggregate of the last five weeks’ polling. And Donald Trump is in the lead.

I think I speak for all of us when I say I wish I weren’t excited about that. Probably, Trump will not be a force for good in the first Republican debate. If nothing else, putting him on the same stage as Jeb Bush and John Kasich seems like a weird mismatch of tone, like adding Batman to Crime and Punishment. Ted Cruz is going to be up there reciting lifelike statements about Iran that Ben Carson has prepared to rebut for weeks, and then Trump will ad lib something with the word “losers” in it.

That’s a grotesque of American democracy, and I’m pretty excited to watch it. I know I shouldn’t be. Probably the best thing you can say about Trump is that he’s a demagogue, and you could argue his antics have crowded out some other, more productive conversation the other 15 GOP candidates might hypothetically have. His net influence on the election is probably not good.

But however he might make us regret indulging his candidacy later, Thursday night we get our reward. I submit that even people who object to Trump’s run for president acknowledge that seeing him in a Republican debate will be fun. Why is that?

One ready answer is that he exposes the deep unseriousness of the contemporary Republican Party. He is a former reality show host and  theme of 1980s comedy. He has never held elected office. He called Mexicans “drug dealers and rapists” during his announcement speech. Despite these obvious disqualifications, he has led Republican polls since he joined the race—confirming our suspicion that a substantial portion of the party is less interested in elections than in shocking imaginary liberals.

Among those of us who lean left, our schadenfreude is enriched by knowing Trump probably wouldn’t succeed as a Democrat. Our Trump is Bernie Sanders, and he talks about policy. Whatever moribund politics has made a past president’s wife our presumptive nominee, we haven’t embraced mere entertainment. I staunchly oppose another Clinton presidency, but I’d sure vote for Hillary over Trump. So would most respondents to last Thursday’s Quinnipiac poll. I believe that objectively proves the general population is less crazy and/or contrarian than the Republican Party.

Those are good-ish reasons to like a Trump debate, but I fear my visceral reason for wanting to see Trump onstage Thursday night is uglier. Although I would never vote for him, I would rather hear him talk politics than Bobby Jindal. Nothing the billionaire says makes me smarter or advances political discourse, but at least he is vapid and entertaining when most Republican rhetoric is vapid and boring.

Bold prediction: The other nine candidates at the debate will emphasize the importance of freedom, small businesses, and making America great again. They will propose lower taxes. A numerical majority will profess to attend church and own guns. It will be a contest, among the nine legitimate candidates, to express the most orthodox adherence to a familiar cluster of vague principles.

Except for making America great, those are the things Trump won’t talk about. He will say virtually anything into a microphone, unless it’s about church, guns, or the tax code. He prefers to talk about himself or other people. His refusal to talk about policy, except in terms of broad saber-rattling, is a funhouse reflection of the other GOP candidates’ refusal to suggest anything new. While the other nine candidates are reciting Our Fathers, he’s saying “who fart in heaven” and giggling at himself.

We’ve come a long way to arrive at “Donald Trump is the candidate Republicans deserve,” but here we are. Thursday night is our welcome home party. It may be a low point for democracy, but it will be the highlight of the 2016 campaign so far.

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