In this era of superfluous partisanship, too many of the elected are forgetting what it means to govern. If they are screaming and shouting, declaring their agenda the lead agent protecting America in some vague nondescript way from political opponents, then they just aren’t doing their job. They might vehemently disagree with me, and tell you that this is exactly what they were elected to do. Well frankly, that’s just not true.

These noises you hear are the hymn of time wasters, of career politicians with motivation for nothing but a promotion. Most of Congress’s time wasters are prancing around, eager to make headlines and secure prime-time interviews because America is not what keeps them up at night, November is. This isn’t what we elect the people for. We elect people to give unrelenting dedication to the pursuit of critical solutions throughout the United States, not only to their district or state but to the entire country. Every American is their constituent.

Whether you’re Fox News’ biggest fan or an avid listener to Crooked Media, a podcast with Barack Obama alums, you’ll agree America is polarized at the moment. Politics has never been good dinner conversation, but today it’s worse than that. It’s a topic people tend to avoid at all cost, but for the wrong reasons.

People will have an easier time finding the ancient city of El Dorado than a piece of bipartisan legislation.

Several times in the last eighteen months or so, there’s been the resurgence of “country over party” calls.

Ideally said motif burns hot in the core of every elected woman and man in the nation.

Obviously, it does not. Even scarier, I can’t say confidently it fills even a majority of those on Capitol Hill. In a country of 300 million plus, even at our best days, countless problems grow. How can any realistic person expect progress in any of these issues given our current partisan condition?

There is probably no one who better exemplifies the problem with Congress better than Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio.

It’s been a busy couple weeks for Mr. Jordan. Allegations have arisen from his days as a wrestling coach, that he ignored players reports of wrongdoing by a team doctor. In a public congressional hearing, Mr. Jordan accused the Deputy Attorney General, a career public servant highly regarded by all who’ve worked with him of being untruthful under oath. In that same hearing, it became blatantly clear how uneducated Mr. Jordan was about the topic of discussion when he clearly did not know that phone calls could not be subpoenaed.

This week he and a handful of his colleagues brought articles of impeachment against Mr. Rosenstein, only to quickly walk it back once realizing how unbelievably stupid they looked doing so. So what’s Mr. Jordan’s next move, announce he’s running for Speaker of the House, cause hey, who is serving the American people better than this guy at the moment?

For professional athletes playing in their contract year, they can expect questions week in and week out about their future. Rarely will you hear an athlete say anything other than that their focus is on finishing out their current contract the best they can, and that they’ll decide about the next one when appropriate.

Jim Jordan and too many of his colleagues could learn something from this. Stop worrying about your next job and finish the current one.

In a way, it as if politicians have adopted the tactics of 1890s yellow journalists in the way they “govern.” They’re loud, they exaggerate, and their focus is not to inform, but rather to provoke.

This idea that one side can be the winner in politics is ludicrous. Politics isn’t a game; there’s no clock in the corner telling us how much time left we have to retain the majority to win. You don’t win like this. This stuff is supposed to go on forever, back and forth. When Americans play politics, we all lose.

Intentionally, I didn’t mention it until now, although it’s pretty obvious, I’m talking to the Republicans. Specifically, I’m talking to Elise Stefanik and every other young person who believes they hold true the values of the Good Old Party. Your leaders are failing you and you should demand better. I don’t always see it, but you guys are destined to be right about some things, but with the all the nonsense going on, governing has taken a back seat.