Actually a leader is emerging: Sarah Palin. But new ideas need new forms to start again the conversation and bring in a new generation. For a fresh start, it should be distanced away from New York, D.C. and Los Angeles, which are all connected to a singular purpose. And it should leave out the decadent establishment press, described recently as “Versailles.” There is little journalism left to it, only the endless meanderings of adolescent irony, the wink and the nudge and the knowing asides of insider jokes and caustic laughter.

There are more than 30 states culturally and politically related today in the center of the country speaking with a single voice. This is American heartland. A conference or congress might be held — even, to coin a phrase, a mid-continental congress — to look toward a better and more representative future, because this is not about 2016 specifically, but the greater American future. Visiting Louisville, Ky., recently on the beautiful, historic, slow-going Ohio River, it seemed a perfect place to start again: dead center of East, West, South and the Great White North, the true center of America today as we rise in prosperity and freedom into the new millennium.