By Ruth Steinhardt
After careers spent on opposite sides of the political divide, former President Obama Press Secretary Jay Carney and former Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) met Sunday on a more congenial field: the stage at the George Washington University’s Jack Morton Auditorium.
Mr. Carney and Mr. West were opponents in the annual #OnlyAtGW Debate, sponsored by the GW Program Board, College Democrats and College Republicans. POLITICO reporter and School of Media and Public Affairs alumna Hadas Gold, B.A. ’10, M.A. ’12, moderated the debate, the theme of which was “The Role of Government in a Free Society.”
But anyone expecting a gladiatorial showdown would have been disappointed. The two found common ground on most issues, from the importance of the First Amendment to Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump—at the mention of whom Mr. Carney groaned, and Mr. West, a staunch conservative, folded in comic chagrin, resting his head on his podium.
Asked whether Mr. Trump’s success could be due to a disproportionate amount of free coverage in the media, both debaters agreed that such attention was more a symptom than a cause of underlying problems.
Mr. Carney admitted that as press secretary he occasionally “fell prey” to the “convenience” of blaming the media, but said doing so was “too easy.”
“The media isn’t at fault for something like this,” he said. “The media participates in and enables the bigger phenomenon that is Trump in this cycle.”
Mr. West compared Mr. Trump’s flashy, confrontational populism to the popularity of reality television.
“When you look at how we’ve evolved as a society, we’re into sensationalism,” he said. “So the media is going to feed us what we’re asking for… And now it has crept into our political system. [Political] debates should be about hard issues—[but] we’re talking about the size of folks’ hands? Give me a break.”
When asked whether he agreed with Mr. Trump’s suggestion that Muslim immigrants should be excluded from the United States, Mr. West dismissed the idea. “That’s silly,” he said.
But several times Mr. West raised the issue of a “global Islamic jihad” and suggested that surveillance of Muslim neighborhoods in the United States “is not profiling—it’s trend analysis.”
Mr. Carney pushed back only in general terms, emphasizing the need to work with, rather than against, Muslim communities in and outside the United States.
“It goes against our values. The idea that we would ban a religious group from a country that was formed in part by people fleeing religious persecution is appalling,” he said. “It’s also tactically absurd. There’s no way we can prosecute this war or deal with this threat if we don’t have allies in the American Muslim community and among the predominantly Muslim nations of the world.”
The two clashed most conspicuously on issues of LGBT rights, and even then courteously.
Mr. Carney expressed unqualified condemnation of the recent North Carolina law rolling back the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals in the name of religious freedom.
“This is a losing effort, and it’s a wrongheaded one,” he said. “I don’t think people should be allowed to refuse services offered to the general public based on their race, their religion, their sexual orientation or gender status.”
Mr. West disagreed, saying that vendors had a right of religious freedom—not to refuse service to individuals, but to refuse to participate in events with which they disagreed, including gay marriages. He also said he disagreed that transgender people have a right to use the bathroom of the gender with which they identify.
“I’ve got two daughters, and I’m a little bit concerned that someone could go into the restroom or use the facilities with them, and they’re anatomically aligned with me,” he said.
But the two were back on terms of friendly banter by the last question, when Ms. Gold asked what they predicted would happen at the GOP convention in July should Mr. Trump be the populist frontrunner but lack the number of delegates needed to secure the nomination.
“If he gets the nomination, or if he’s denied the nomination but has a clear plurality going into [the convention], there’s going to be a lot of struggle within the Republican Party,” Mr. Carney said. “If I were still a reporter, it would be a story I’d love to cover.”
“I bet you would!” Mr. West said.