Poles at the Polls

I take you on a tour of foreign land I know very well and the political earthquake delivered by its people

I saw plenty of both these posters during my latest Polish excursion

For this newsletter, I will take my readers back to the Republic of Poland, the country where, in the words of Glenn Frey, it all started. After all, it was back in 2019 where I opted to travel to the Eastern European nation for the first time, without nearly as much understanding of Polish culture as I have now, to prepare materials for a 20-page essay on that year’s election for the Polish Parliament (Sejm.) Ultimately it was thanks to that essay that I was accepted into my master’s program. I thus owe a great deal to Poland and will, as many of you already know, always hold a special place for that country in my heart.

Just last week, I was lucky enough to make my fifth visit to Poland, specifically the modern, Americanized capital of Warsaw where I enjoyed the company of my now lifelong Polish friends. Granted, my study of their language, culture, and even Poland’s grim history has not hurt my standing with the normally difficult-to-crack Poles. I am also pleased to report that my Polish language skills were far less rusty than I had feared. I was even fortunate enough to engage a conversation on a bus with a Cuban man in three languages, (English, Polish and Spanish) albeit the only three languages I have any confidence in speaking. While I was unable to accomplish all the goals I had set out before my visit, I still was able to conduct meaningful discussions regarding Poland’s recent presidential election, a two-round affair that occurred on May 18th and June 1st.

I hate to bore you, but before revealing the results, I must, lest you have too many questions, don my professor’s hat to give a Reader’s Digest version of how the Polish constitutional system functions.

Like many countries in Europe, Poland has both a President (Andrzej Duda) and a Prime Minister (Donald Tusk, not to be confused with another Donald T.) The President is elected directly by the Polish people, while the Prime Minister is elected by the Sejm, which is also elected by the people. Elections for the former office occur every five years, and for the latter office every four years. The Prime Minister is responsible for the day-to-day operations of government and appoints a cabinet of ministers to carry out his directives. The Polish President, like our own President, is the commander-in-chief of the Polish Armed Forces and like the Prime Minister, represents the nation at international events. While he has little power to carry out his own vision unilaterally, the President carries one ultimate trump card: veto power. And with Prime Minister Tusk and President Duda leading opposing political camps, Duda’s veto pen has become Tusk’s bête noire.

As I said before, the Polish Presidency is determined through two rounds of elections, with the top two vote winners from the first round advancing to the second. On May 18th, those places were occupied by the liberal mayor of Warsaw Rafał Trzaskowski, an ally of Tusk and his neoliberal Civic Platform party, and a conservative former boxer-turned historian with no political background named Karol Nawrocki, an ally of Duda and his conservative-nationalist Law and Justice Party. The two men could not be more different. Trzaskowski is the epitome of an elite liberal politician. A flawless English speaker and polyglot, a supporter of relaxing Poland’s abortion laws and of the LGBTQ community, an alumnus of Oxford University and the European Union Institute for Security Studies in Paris, and even a supporter of NATO membership for Ukraine, Trzaskowski was far-and-away the preferred option of political and media elites not only in Europe, but here in the United States as well.

Meanwhile, Nawrocki represents an entirely different side of Poland the likes of Tusk and Trzaskowski do not want the world to see. While currently the President of the Polish Institute of National Remembrance, a state institution dedicated to preserving the memory of Polish history, Nawrocki spent the entire campaign deflecting allegations of dubious conduct throughout his life. These allegations included escalating his boxing history towards street fighting in chaotic football hooligan brawls, and more seriously, ties to the criminal underworld as a sex procurer for shady clients at a luxury hotel on the Baltic Sea. Regarding policy, Nawrocki has attacked Trzaskowski’s LGBTQ policy for allegedly “sexualizing children”, opposes the further delegation of Polish sovereignty to the European Union, and supports robust ties between the Polish state and the Catholic Church (which exists in a symbiotic relationship with Polish conservatives), as well as the Republican Party in the United States and other patriotic and nationalist movements in Europe. In a boost to Nawrocki, The Trump Administration returned the favor by publicly endorsing him.

Still, for most of the campaign, Trzaskowski seemed poised to coast to an easy win as Nawrocki struggled to squash all those questions about his past. That was, until a gentleman by the name of Sławomir Mentzen, the man who achieved third place in the first round with 15% of the vote, inserted himself. A libertarian economist and professional brewer from the Polish city of Torun, Mentzen is massively popular on social media and won more votes among Poles under 30 than Trzaskowski and Nawrocki combined. This popularity is thanks to Mentzen’s clever wordplay and harsh criticism of Polish and European Union taxes and regulations, which he believes unfairly punish entrepreneurs. Of course he doesn’t just sell his beer, he apparently loves to consume it as well. In fact, Mentzen is such an interesting character that I even attempted to land an interview with him. While my attempts in Warsaw were unsuccessful (one of his assistants bailed on me at the last moment), I will keep up my effort.

In order to recruit Mentzen’s youthful loyal supporters, both Trzaskowski and Nawrocki agreed to sit down with Mentzen and discuss their platforms. Theatrically, Mentzen published the Torun Declaration, a policy paper he would present to determine which candidate suited his platform better. While Nawrocki engaged in a friendly banter and assured Mentzen he would implement all eight of Mentzen’s promises, Trzaskowski engaged in a more confrontational discussion after refusing to rule out a further transfer of Polish Sovereignty to the European Union and continuing to promote Ukrainian membership in NATO. Mentzen reminded his supporters that Ukraine would likely never join NATO, and any serious attempt would almost certainly provoke an all-out war with Russia. However, it was Trzaskowski’s defense of his gender policies as a matter of human rights, already highly controversial in a conservative society like Poland. sealed his fate with Mentzen’s conservative supporters who see Trzaskowski’s progressive platform as a threat to Polish traditions and even free speech. This blockbuster, Roganesque interview ultimately obtained nearly 5 million views, including me.

And last Sunday, Karol Nawrocki shocked Western elites, and the pollsters, and earned himself the Polish Presidency, albeit by the narrow margin of 51-49%.

Poland’s election is a good lesson for what happens when the political and media establishment decides that a political candidate presents a danger to the country who must be defeated at all costs. And we Americans can attest to this global trend. Instead of derailing the anti-establishment and usually conservative-nationalist candidate, as was attempted through multiple avenues against President Trump for the last 10 years, these efforts instead backfire by instead strengthening the bond between the leader and his supporters. Though the question remains: will liberal elites take note of this lesson?