The Annual Symposium has convened each December since well before this archive begins in 2010. It is ordinary people around a table: a port logistics manager, an accountant, an engineer, an insurance agent, arguing about the country they share. A moderator puts the questions. Who answers is sometimes decided by lot, and each speaker has five minutes. Nobody is there to win a news cycle. The point is to hear the other side out and answer it on the merits.

What we publish is each correspondent’s opening remarks, as delivered. The cross-examination that follows is not part of the record. That is the price of a room where people will say what they think, and we consider it worth paying.

America needs more rooms like this one: people who disagree, seated close enough to hear each other, arguing hard and staying civil. Washington could take a lesson.