Why yes, we did co-host an event at the Old Ebbitt Grill yesterday where Huffington Post‘s HuffPostLive and Third Way.
Whether HuffPost was interviewing Miss America Mallory Hagen or the official swearing-in liveblog. Among the invited crowd included Beltway mainstays like Delaware Governor Jack Markell, former Rep. Ellen Tauscher and former MPAA Chairman Dan Glickman. There was also Uber founder Travis Kalanick and “White Collar” actor Matt Bomer. Variety came by to profile how Hollywood and the Beltway have more in common than they’d think:
“Some veteran Washington figures who have been pushing for compromise — even as the town descended into even greater gridlock — saw Obama’s inaugural address as infused with the message that even if post-partisanship fell short, in many ways change didn’t.
‘He knows he can’t force the Republicans to do things, but he is going to try and he is going to use the power of this office, which is considerable, to move them in that direction,’ said Matt Bennett, VP of public affairs and co-founder of Third Way, a centrist Democratic org. ‘But mentioning Stonewall, and mentioning gay equality that explicitly twice in an inaugural address, marks a sea change in American politics where these things went from being the fringes to literally in the center of what an inaugurated president was talking about in his address.”
You can see more of our best and brightest in the slideshow below: