I had heard about U.S. political polarization before I landed here. I read about poisoned political landscapes, two parties competing every day in a kind of political mud-wrestling contest, deep racial divisions.
After my arrival, it was obvious I had basically read the truth.
And you know what? I feel a little ashamed because I enjoy the fighting, the debates and the oddities, like an old man standing on a stage talking to a chair. For me, this is a huge dose of political stimulant.
Why? Because I'm tired of politics without fighting, without real differences in content, without tough scuffles from time to time. I've had an overdose of harmony. I'm from Germany.
It all began in 2005. The two major parties, the conservative Christian Democratic Union and the center-left Social Democratic Party, built a grand coalition under Chancellor Angela Merkel, who remains in office. Natural opponents since the founding of the West German Federal Republic in 1949, the two parties had to come together to keep things going. And from that point on, the differences between the former opponents began to vanish. Politics became boring.
What happens if opponents are forced to cooperate? They work only on the things they agree upon, which naturally are not too many. All the other stuff isn't even discussed, at least not publicly. It may feel peaceful for a while, but it becomes harmful to robust political culture — although there still are lots of Germans who consider the coalition's work to be great and very useful for the country.
These people clearly don't understand how important fighting is for democracy.
Consider Germany's 2009 federal election. Merkel's conservative party was projected to form a new center-right government by ending its kumbaya relationship with the Social Democratic Party. The SPD then had to figure out how to attack Merkel after four years of acting in harmony with her party.
And what did Merkel do? Nothing.
She didn't want to give the Social Democrats a target to attack. Merkel didn't want to give potential center-left voters a reason to show up at the polls at the last minute, motivated by a controversial debate or a symbolically charged issue. And it helped that her opponent, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, a smart, skilled, pleasant candidate, was as exciting as a blank piece of paper.
Merkel won with a voter turnout of 70.8 percent, compared to 77.7 percent four years earlier. It was the lowest turnout since the founding of the republic. Merkel had lulled the voters.
And it's still going on. The most controversial issue in Germany today is the eurozone crisis.
Though they've opposed the eurozone since 2009, Social Democrats nevertheless support Merkel's bailout decision, declaring it would be irresponsible to take political advantage of the crisis.
The result is that there has been no fundamental debate between the two parties about how to deal with this crisis. This is dangerous. Politicians should discuss game-changing issues as extensively as possible.
That's why I enjoy the U.S. presidential race so much. It may be flashy, sometimes filthy, sometimes brutal, and for sure it is a problem that money plays such an important role in its orchestration. But there are real differences about how to secure the future of this country. U.S. voters have a real choice.
Christoph Hickmann, a political reporter in the Berlin bureau of German national daily Suddeutsche Zeitung, is currently with the Chicago Tribune as an Arthur F. Burns fellow.