Lecture Hop Editor Pierce Stanley attended this year's New Yorker Festival. Here, he discusses the Festival's ethos and the state of political dialogue. And protein bars, there are those too.

The Metropolitan Pavilion, a sleek hardwood floored and white-walled Chelsea outpost nestled comfortably on 18th Street, played host this weekend to the city's finest exercise in pretension, the New Yorker Festival. The festival, as usual, lived up to all of the bloated expectations of ostentatious spectacle that any New Yorker might anticipate from Condé Nast's favorite love-child, but yesterday's "Campaign Trail" panel on domestic politics surprisingly departed from that mold.

Upon entering said hive of pomposity, I was immediately bombarded with offers (courtesy of a wall of neatly lined MacBook Pros) to save the environment by subscribing for the digital edition of the New Yorker, yet given no option to cancel my print edition. Immediately after passing the MacBooks a bit bemused, I found myself almost instantly consuming a number of complimentary soy protein bars, thrust into our hands by eager representatives of a new PowerBar doppelganger.

After maneuvering around a crowd of elderly onlookers in the book section, eager to catch a glimpse of Haruki Marukami as he signed edition after edition of What I Talk about When I Talk about Running, I thought that I would be able to nestle comfortably into my white, plastic seat at the back of the hall to listen to the sing-song voice of executive editor Dorothy Wickenden as she commenced a discussion with three liberal, egghead contemporaries about the remainder of the election.

But I was wrong. Instead, I was forced to listen to a presentation about Acura's new line of hybrids before I would even have a chance of getting my own ticket clipped and find my seat directly behind one of the Metropolitan Pavilion's multifarious McKim, Mead, and White-invoking columns.

I knew that this politics panel, appropriately named The Campaign Trail and stocked with the New Yorker's own political commentators Hendrik Hertzberg, Ryan Lizza, and George Packer would be my saving grace for the day. And it was, as I was treated for over an hour and a half to an enlightening discussion about the ins and outs of each of the presidential candidates' campaigns, its pitfalls and triumphs, and a little humor mixed thrown in midst.

Laughs were frequently had at Sarah Palin's expense, with the occasional Joe Biden and "maverick" joke also in tow, but the level of discussion was serious throughout. Lizza stole the show with his eloquence and expert analysis of McCain's ever-evolving campaign strategy where he posited that McCain's slightly "erratic nature" may win or lose the election for him.

Also, his spot-on comments about Obama's aura as calm, cool, and collected in light of the bailout mess gave flavor to the discussion of the clash of personality between candidates. Meanwhile George Packer, who wrote a number of New Yorker political dispatches from Kentucky and West Virginia during the Democratic primaries, offered the nitty-gritty, with some clever insight into what Obama has to do in the coming days to pick up the blue-collar, middle class, and union demographics. Hendrik Hertzberg, sage as always, hung back and offered his own down-to-earth opinions, with the occasional Sarah Palin jab or two.

In all, this New Yorker Festival event proved not to fall prey to the pretension that frequently befalls such gatherings of East Coast Liberal Elitists. Rather, it was a lighthearted and genuine look at the harsh political realities that face our country today, with some very challenging questions expertly asked and answered. One can only hope that that spirit will continue to pervade New Yorker Festival events in the future. Only then can I say that I'll be willing to return, free soy-protein bar in hand, of course.