We have all been subjected to too much hyperbole in the age of Trump. Which is one of my “not” goals. I do not want to add to that frenzy.

There are, however, some situations which are, in fact, existential. Not because anyone wants them to be, but because they have been thrust upon us. I happen to be living in the middle of one of them; the looming mid-term election in NJ CD-7.

Why existential? Because if the ongoing wrecking of our institutions continues for even a little while longer the damage will be generational. Congress is playing a critical role in facilitating that destruction by pursuing one of its “not” goals. That is, to “not” act as a check on the administration’s brazen and open misuse of power.

If you need me, in that regard, to do more than merely mention the hollowing out of our military, our national intelligence services, the Department of Justice, the FBI, our courts, and our alliances - in tandem with the relentless drive to hyperinflate prices through ill-conceived immediate term-giveaways and tariffs with long-term consequences - then this article may not be for you. Which is fine. We will all reap the full measure of what this chaos has sown. And we will do so together.

That very unwelcome outcome need not, however, be realized. A way, and perhaps the only way, forward requires our leaders in Congress to actually lead. And it is painfully obvious that this simply will not happen with the current crew. They simply refuse to do their jobs. Perhaps none more so than Tom Kean, Jr.  Who, despite his venerable family name, puts the “A” in AWOL and “C” in coward. He is nowhere to be found except on YouTube, where he asks the electorate to “thank” him for acquiescing to all this carnage.

CD-7 is one of the few competitive electoral districts left in the wake of both parties’ frenzied efforts to gerrymander voter choice out of existence. So – given the stakes and Kean, Jr.’s dismal nonperformance – it is no wonder that the field is full of Democratic challengers seeking to win their party’s primary this coming June.

I was a lifelong Republican, but no longer am. I am also not a Democrat. I am now an Independent. That is, I am part of the demographic that will decide this election.

Rather than trash any aspiring Democrat in this race, I am going to describe one of them; Rebecca Bennett.

I spoke to her yesterday for over an hour. One on one (plus one of her staffers). I am a very direct person and asked very direct questions about a wide range of questions. Including the culture wars, which I blame Democrats for igniting and then relentlessly mishandling.

Rebecca is, in my view, a centrist. She has to be. As a wife and mother of two with a career, she must navigate the same world that we are navigating. The real world, from which ideologues and extremists detract.

There is steel inside Rebecca’s gloves. A former naval aviator and test pilot, she was part of the tip of our military spear for some 10 years, post ROTC. As was her husband – a former submariner. Which for me is not an indicator of her views; I don’t know Rebecca well enough to reach that far. But it is an indicator of her approach. Her life’s path demonstrates personal discipline, attention to detail, embracing facts, and teamwork.

I did not hear anything in our talk that I was directly opposed to. We differed at times in the white spaces, and there likely are as yet unexplored areas of real disagreement. All of which is fine. Because nothing changes without a marketplace of ideas, and there is no such marketplace when everyone shares the same idea. One need only look to our current Congress and our current CD-7 representative to see what a party of ostriches yields.

We are at a place where this country yearns for, and cannot find, people who engage with and understand the world in the same basic way that we do. That are not unelectable former Biden retreads (think Michael Roth, Biden’s interim SBA head, also seeking the Democratic nod). And are nevertheless willing to engage in our broken political process. Not because it is easy. But because it needs to be done.

Rebecca Bennett hits all those endpoints. She is worth a long look.