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I disagree with Maxwell Frost on plenty. At least he showed up.

I did something on Monday that probably surprised a few people.

I gave Maxwell Frost credit.

Yes, that Maxwell Frost.

The young Democratic congressman from Florida went on Jubilee’s “Surrounded,” where one person sits in the middle and takes on a rotating line of people waiting to challenge them.

It is basically political musical chairs with nowhere to hide.

And Frost showed up.

Now, I disagree with this kid on plenty. I disagreed with some of what he said in the debate. At times, I thought he got his clock cleaned.

But he went.

That matters.

We spend a lot of time complaining that politicians live inside bubbles. They go on friendly television shows, answer friendly questions, post carefully edited clips on social media and then congratulate themselves for being brave.

Frost walked into a room specifically designed to challenge him.

One of the debates was over student debt.

Frost argued that his generation was sold a promise: go to college, take on the debt if necessary, get the good job, pay it off and live the American dream.

His argument was that the promise did not work out that way for a lot of young people.

Then came the response.

A woman sitting across from him basically said: Why is your student debt my responsibility?

That is a pretty good question.

She pointed out that universities like Harvard sit on enormous endowments. If somebody should be on the hook for a system that loaded young people up with debt, why does the bill automatically get handed to taxpayers who never took out the loan?

She also talked about her own son, who skipped college, joined the Marine Corps and was moving into a career with the Secret Service.

In other words, there were other choices.

That is where this debate gets more interesting than the usual shouting match.

Frost is not entirely wrong about what young Americans were told.

For decades, kids heard the same message: college is the path to success.

Not one path.

The path.

Schools pushed it. Parents pushed it. Politicians pushed it. Universities certainly did not object.

Then tuition exploded, colleges accumulated billions, students borrowed enormous amounts of money and suddenly everybody acted shocked that there was a problem.

But there is a very big leap between saying the system was badly designed and saying somebody else should now pay your loan.

If I take out a mortgage and the housing market collapses, does the guy down the street owe me my house?

If I finance a car I cannot afford, does my neighbor inherit the payment?

Why does education debt suddenly become everybody’s debt?

And if we really believe colleges helped create this mess, I would start knocking on their doors before reaching into the pockets of taxpayers.

Ask some of these universities to open those endowments.

That conversation might get interesting very quickly.

Still, the part that stuck with me was not even student loans.

It was Frost sitting there taking the questions.

At one point somebody challenged him on the American dream itself. Frost talked about driving Uber and hustling to make ends meet before winning office.

His opponent immediately pointed out the obvious irony: You went from driving Uber to Congress.

That sounds suspiciously like upward mobility.

Again, Frost did not run away.

He argued back.

Good.

We need more of that.

I would much rather watch somebody I disagree with defend his ideas in front of people who are trying to tear those ideas apart than watch another politician deliver a perfectly rehearsed three-minute television hit.

And I wish more people on both sides would do it.

Conservatives too.

Walk into the hostile room.

Take the question.

Let somebody tell you you are wrong.

Then explain why you think you are right.

Politics has become too comfortable with performance and too uncomfortable with actual argument.

Everybody wants the viral clip.

Everybody wants the friendly host.

Everybody wants the applause line.

Very few people want the chair in the middle of the room.

Maxwell Frost took the chair.

I still think he is wrong about plenty.

But he showed up.

These days, that alone deserves some credit.

— Bo Snerdley

Rush Hour airs Monday through Friday and moves quickly through the day’s hottest political stories, breaking developments and media absurdities. It is the fastest hour in American media because there is always more happening than the legacy media has time—or desire—to explain.

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