The grace-notes of each Commissioner were different but they clustered around a consistent central theme. America’s security is too important to be sunk in a sea of partisan posturing. It requires that America come together in the national unity that existed in the aftermath of the attacks. It requires that the people who hold or seek the reins of national power place America’s safety above partisan advantage and act together to protect America and reform its security apparatus to meet new and unimagined threats. The warning was clear when Chairman Kean declared that we no longer have the luxury of time. The threat is extraordinary; the threat is real; and the threat is now.

Extraordinary threats demand the unified attention of extraordinary men, even in the depths of a political contest. Both the President and his Democratic challenger must come together in the interest of the nation and demand that the Congress act on the 911 Commission’s recommendations and that it act now. While reasonable minds can differ as to the best way to address the threat there can be no dissenting from the proposition that action to reconstruct the nation’s security services to meet the threat of stateless terrorism is not just of the highest urgency, it is long overdue.

The unanimous conclusion of the ten quite partisan individuals who make up the 911 commission is that the responsibilities and the failures that created the atmosphere in which the tragedy could happen are those of many administrations. The Commission chose to look forward and not back, to recommend solutions rather than to assign blame. That is the approach that both parties to the political contest must take knowing that the sand is running in the glass and each day of idleness brings us a step closer to an Armageddon. Patriotism is bi-partisan and it is up to George W, Bush and John F. Kerry to make it so. Their response will determine whether we have the extraordinary men demanded by these extraordinary times.