I might be more sensitive than others to the lack of authentic political debates in the United States because my formative journalistic experience was when working at a periodical obsessively devoted to engaging its readers in the conversation, not lecturing them. It was in the 1970s in my native Poland. During my recent visits to Poland, I noticed that Polish television offered honest, down-to-the-bone political debates. They did not lecture but allowed politicians from the ruling party to show their arrogance and incompetence. It helped Donald Tusk win the election, leading to the government change last December. Americans have not seen a similar sincerity in political debates since Crossfire in the 1990s.
Henryk A. Kowalczyk