Imagine, like Peyton Fox, you grow up in a family with longstanding ties to the Navy. You have mixed views of continuing the family legacy and going to the Naval Academy. Academically, athletically, and in leadership, you earn honors. Your decade of meritorious service as an officer and a SEAL ends with a letter of resignation, followed by a letter of hope that a high school sweetheart is available and interested in getting reacquainted, and your last SEAL mission leaves you badly injured.

Your return to Portland, Maine, leads to honors as a law student and an offer to join the venerable law firm that your step-great-grandfather co-founded. Out of the blue, you are approached with an offer you choose to accept: to finish the eleventh term of a congressman dying of cancer, and getting entangled in the ideological wars within and between the Republicans and Democrats.

You win favor as a legislator and reelection for four terms in the House and three in the Senate. Your savvy, intelligence, well-connectedness, and pragmatism are tested every day.

What can you accomplish that benefits Maine and the Nation?