A raging flood tide may not be welcome at our nation’s shorelines, but a sweeping one is needed internally this year to deter increasingly evident risk of dramatic way-of-life change. Our peaceful, proud, productive, and hopefully perpetuating homeland is under unprecedented siege that demands popular recognition and coordinated response. The unchecked wave of illegal invaders with unvetted backgrounds, unknown sponsors, and uncertain motives threatens the foundations of a democratic nation built on the principle of continued gradual, non-destructive assimilation of legal immigrants.

This issue is about collectively preserving ourselves and our mind set – as human beings and Americans first, not as Democrats, Republicans, or the spreading array of sexual, racial and other proliferating identity groups demanding special attention that supposedly have been melted in our inclusive pot. This divisiveness should cause all of us to question whether we have become asylum cases.

Is there a pathway for a leadership slate of independent candidates? The situation of presumptive nominees seems to call for a prominent and respected moderate visionary with personal characteristics somewhere between an “empty-suit” figurehead politician and a “full-of-himself” bully-pulpit business tycoon – performance versus persona. We need principled leadership conviction about domestic mission and firmness in international affairs, coupled with professional management and communication skills.

For its part, the Congress must morph from a daily ideological battleground and spin-generating exercise into the intended role of logically executing the elected leader’s legislative agenda. That role calls for appropriate checks and balances, not check-mates. Policy making must be acceptable to more than the slimmest majority of the voting public.

Phil Osifer