WASHINGTON, D.C. — Better For America was launched against the backdrop of the deeply divisive campaigns of the two most unpopular presidential candidates in modern history, and the widespread dissatisfaction of the American electorate. The mission of BFA was to keep the electoral window open through the summer, and allow a leader to emerge to restore honor, integrity, and unifying and principled leadership to the 2016 presidential election cycle.

© 2016 by Hedrick Smith. Republished with permission from the author. Smith is the executive editor of reclaimtheamericandream.org.

Last week, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump proposed congressional term limits.

"I hear it from more and more people," Trump said of term limits for federal legislators. "We're going to take a very serious look at that."

San Diego, CALIF.- The Editorial Board at the San Diego Union Tribune has taken to task the Clinton Foundation and by proxy, the special interests that have dominated our current political landscape.

The editorial focuses on the 2010 Citizens United decision, where a “bitterly divided Supreme Court ruled that corporations have political speech rights and shouldn’t have limits on their independent political expenditures.”

This week, the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates announced what polls it will utilize in excluding candidates from its debates.

The CPD says candidates like the Libertarian Party’s Gary Johnson and the Green Party’s Jill Stein must get 15 percent in polls conducted by “five national public opinion polling organizations” — ABC/Washington Post, CBS/New York Times, CNN/Opinion Research Corporation, Fox News, and NBC/Wall Street Journal.

As with past election cycles, third party and independent candidates – as well as initiatives aimed at reducing the power of the two major parties – are struggling to achieve access to general election ballots. In some cases, this is the result of general apathy toward specific parties, candidates, or reforms.

On Wednesday night, Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein and her running-mate, Ajamu Baraka, made their first co-appearance before a national audience during a town hall event hosted by CNN's Chris Cuomo.

Among many good-government types, there’s a reliable refrain: We need more moderates in Washington!

Such sentiments are no doubt well intended. It’s easy to see where they come from. The division and contentiousness in Washington is dysfunctional by any standard.

Nonetheless, the yearning for more moderates is misplaced.

Vote your conscience. Like many, I have struggled with the choices we face in the coming presidential election and the tone of the campaigns. I am increasingly disturbed and distressed by the political environment – in some ways similar to what we experience every four years, but amplified to an unprecedented degree. The Trump campaign, in particular, has gone beyond the bounds of what is normally deemed acceptable. Even in politics.

Evan McMullin’s first full week as a candidate for president has been both surprising and, for some of us, predictable. McMullin talks and acts like a seasoned candidate, and not like a novice traversing his first national campaign. Predictable are the dismissive tones from a political class heart hardened to newcomers.