Partisan political theater was on full display mid-afternoon on Oct. 10 at the Los Angeles Convention Center, as two of the panels at the inaugural Politicon conference overlapped.
In “Independence Hall,” a panel included Democratic strategists David Axelrod, James Carville and former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, while next-door, in “Freedom Hall,” right-wing firebrand Ann Coulter debated Cenk Uygur, a left-wing activist and commentator.
Some of the louder Democrats in the crowd chortled as Gingrich talked economics, and whooped when Axelrod defended President Barack Obama’s economic record. Meanwhile it seemed Uygur and the standing-room-only crowd next-door couldn’t quite tell whether Coulter was serious when she said things would be better had the United States dropped a nuclear weapon on Iraq instead of toppling Saddam Hussein and then withdrawing.
“ISIS, when they put somebody in a cage and burned him alive, we thought they were the worst monsters on Earth. You say you’d like to do that on a grand scale, because that’s what a nuclear weapon does,” Uygur said to Coulter, to emphatic applause.
Did Politicon, with its variety and diversity, change minds or create some ground for compromise?
“In response to 9/11, yes,” Coulter responded, “we should not have sent ground troops. We should have dropped … in retrospect, now that we know we’re in a country that can elect Barack Obama, instead of bothering to create a democracy in Iraq, which we did, and which was working beautifully,” she said, to boos. “Are we getting back to immigration, the topic of my book, and technically the topic of this panel?”
The two-day conference, which ran Oct. 9-10, attracted about 9,000 attendees, according to event organizers, and brought together some of the nation’s most recognizable figures in politics, media and entertainment, including a stand-up routine from “The Daily Show” host Trevor Noah, followed by a conversation with Carville, the political commentator who helped Bill Clinton win the presidency; as well as former Clinton adviser Paul Begala; former Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.); John Avlon, editor-in-chief of the Daily Beast; with Edward Snowden, who gained fame after leaking classified information from the NSA, appearing via live video from Russia.
Modeled after the wildly popular Comic-Con, Politicon’s first run was a sort of cholent for the political mind. There was the good — former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau and Jay Leno-monologue writer and Democratic political consultant Jon Macks on speechwriting; conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, broadcasting his show live and interviewing, via telephone, Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina. There was the bad — a woman who screamed “Bulls—!” to one of Gingrich’s points and then bragged about it after the panel. And there was the weird — ranging from the “Beats, Rhymes and Justice” slam poetry session to the cleverly and thematically cosplay-dressed attendees who got in for free.
In “Democracy Village,” the physical proximity of booths from various organizations, despite their stark ideological contrasts, created a bit of a compromising, kumbaya feel. Local conservative radio station KRLA, for example, bumped shoulders with the LGBT group Log Cabin Republicans, while just a few feet away was a Teamsters Local Union booth and one for the Los Angeles County Young Democrats.
“This is really the intersection of politics and entertainment,” said Macks, who, in addition to his comedy writing, has also done debate preparation sessions with Obama, Bill Clinton, Joe Biden and John Kerry, as well as speechwriting for Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and others. “When politics is entertainment, when 24 million people are watching Donald Trump debate, this is a chance for everyone from your political junkies to political nerds to your issue-oriented people to everyday citizens who are just interested in finding out and having some fun.”
Did Politicon, with its variety and diversity, change minds or create some ground for compromise? Probably not, but that wasn’t really its purpose. Like any convention — whether for comic books, fashion, politics or entertainment — many, maybe even most of the attendees, were those already passionate about, and probably set in, their political and ideological beliefs. But with commentators on opposite sides of the spectrum sharing a stage, and with activists from the left and the right schmoozing and working only a few feet apart, Politicon did deliver on its slogan: “Entertain Democracy.”
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