The American political landscape has changed dramatically over the past 25 years. In September of 2001 the world was forever changed by the watershed events of 09/11. The nineteen mostly Saudi Arabian terrorists took four planes and utilized them as missiles to take down the World Trade Center buildings and mar the Pentagon. Nearly 3,000 American's lives were tragically lost that day. Over the next ten to twenty years it provoked American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. Generations of Americans born between the late 1990s and mid-2010s only know an America at war. But when only 1% of the American people serve in uniform, did we really know what war was like? When now in retrospect, there were never weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq, the begged question becomes, "what was it all for?"

In the early 2000s when George W. Bush was being considered for president his alcohol use history and distant Driving Under the Influence (DUI) kerfuffle had been a particular point of contention in addressing his character for office. Only ten years earlier, having "smoked but not inhaled" cannabis nearly took out Bill Clinton from being considered worthy of the office of the president. In office, Clinton had experienced "Nannygate" when Zoe Baird's nomination for Attorney General was withdrawn because of a lack of payment of social security taxes on her nanny, who also happened to be an undocumented worker from Peru.

While the cutthroat political vitriol can truly be traced back to the 1990s and Newt Gingrich's "win at any cost" mentality, it was when Mitch McConnell, then Minority Senate Leader, pledged publicly to "make Obama a one term president" by opposing any and all legislative success for his administration. Obama squandered any and all of his political capital by pushing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known colloquially as "Obamacare", through in March 2010 while he had the Democratic majorities in both the US House and Senate. With Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's legislation whip magic the ACA was passed. However, the historic memory is of her gaffe when she commented that Congress must "pass the thing {ACA} to see what's in it".

Political ambitions on both sides, Republican and Democrat, have been corrupted by their fringe elements. Gerrymandered districts have sheltered reckless politicians who have zero risk of losing their next election, unless they violate their parties' core beliefs and have a more extreme candidate beat them in the next primary election. Extremes of both sides like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), and Lauren Bobert (R-CO) are the perfect examples of these fringe elements in both parties. They can take extreme positions because they have no risk of losing to moderates.

At the end of the day, character matters. Listen to what some of our political fore fathers said about morality, character, and politics.

"How is it possible that society should escape destruction if the moral tie is not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed?"

• Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

“It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.”

• George Washington

“It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution.”

• Thomas Jefferson

“Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks—no form of Government, can render us secure. To suppose that any form of Government will secure liberty or happiness without any form of virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.”

• James Madison