For all the talk about rancor and division in contemporary American politics, direct public confrontations between major figures of the two parties are actually quite rare. Aside from debates during election season, the two sides jab at each other almost exclusively through duelling statements, press conferences, appearances on their respective cable channels, and mostly unwatched and unheeded congressional speeches. The breezy, brazen dishonesty of the Trump Administration fits snugly within a political culture that does not offer many occasions when politicians can be directly challenged on the facts by their opponents in real time. All this lies in stark contrast to, say, the British parliamentary system, which forces the embattled Prime Minister, Theresa May, to face interrogation by the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, and other ministers—along with the jeers and howls of backbenchers—during the weekly Prime Minister’s Questions.

In 2010, President Obama’s participation in a similar televised Q. & A. session with congressional Republicans was so well received by politicos and the press that it inspired a short-lived bipartisan campaign, called “Demand Question Time,” to bring the British tradition to the U.S. “[T]here was something riveting and moving about political opponents squaring off for an unfettered and unmoderated discussion of the challenges that face the nation,” Mother Jones’s David Corn wrote. “Though nothing was resolved in terms of policy and legislation, this was a moment of optimism.”

Tuesday’s lively Oval Office photo op—a sit-down between the Democratic leaders, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, and President Trump and a sullen and silent Mike Pence—was perhaps the closest American politics has come to a repeat of that unusual day. The conversation, about the looming threat of a government shutdown over funding for a border wall, heated up as Pelosi and Schumer urged Trump to support funding non-wall border security or the passage of bipartisan appropriations bills, along with a resolution funding the Department of Homeland Security for a year, also without wall funding. Both options, they insisted, would be likely to pass Congress. Trump, of course, said that any deal without funding for the wall would be a non-starter, and argued that a package he could get behind wouldn’t be supported by enough Democrats in the Senate to pass. “If we thought we were going to get it passed in the Senate, Nancy, we would do it immediately,” he said. “We would get it passed very easily in the House—Nancy, I’d have it passed in two seconds. It doesn’t matter, though, because we can’t get it passed in the Senate, because we need ten Democrat votes. That’s the problem.”

Schumer countered Trump between strained smiles. “We have a lot of disagreements here,” he said. “The Washington Post today gave you a whole lot of Pinocchios, because they say you constantly misstate how much of the wall is built and how much is there. But that’s not the point here. We have a disagreement about whether it’s effective—not on border security but on the wall. We do not want to shut down the government. You have called twenty times to shut down the government. You say, ‘I want to shut down the government.’ We don’t. We want to come to an agreement.”

After a back-and-forth over claims that Trump had read from index cards about the wall (“What the President is representing in terms of his cards over there are not factual,” Pelosi said) and the results of the midterm elections (“When the President brags that he won North Dakota and Indiana,” Schumer said, “he’s in real trouble”), Trump, in a moment of pique, said that he would accept responsibility for a shutdown. “I am proud to shut down the government for border security, Chuck,” he said, “because the people of this country don’t want criminals and people that have lots of problems and drugs pouring into our country. So I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down.”

Repeatedly, in the course of the photo op, Pelosi tried to rein in the discussion. “I don’t think we should have a debate in front of the press on this,” she said early on. As things wound down, she described the turn the conversation had taken as “most unfortunate.” “We came in here in good faith,” she told reporters, “and we’re entering into this kind of a discussion in the public view.”

Trump, naturally, was less perturbed. “It’s not bad, Nancy,” he responded. “It’s called transparency.”

Trump’s surliness and Pelosi’s unease aside, the participation of public servants in public discussions about public affairs does seem healthy. It’s a wonder we’ve gone so long with so few of them.