I am talking about striving in our own professions and civic lives for what we ask — what we demand and expect — our elected leaders to deliver: more integrity, less phoniness and more consideration of the community.

I'll volunteer my vocation as an example. Perhaps 95 percent of the American public thinks the news media are "part of the problem." The other 5 percent work in news or don't own televisions. Our craft is seen as tabloid, divisive, serially obsessive, gluttonous for the trivial, argumentative, biased in sneaky ways and distorted. And the market seems to be saying to us, "Go away, we won't pay!"