There is something different about debating government after you have experienced what happens when it fails.
For me, that lesson began with the death of my daughter, Katie.
Today, as the Trump administration works to restore enforcement, strengthen accountability and prevent the kinds of failures that can produce tragedies like ours, I have also seen the importance of giving victims and their families a voice within the system. The Department of Homeland Security's Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement, or VOICE, office has helped our family navigate an awful process that no family should ever have to understand.
That perspective has changed the way I think about public policy. I no longer see these debates simply as arguments over laws or political philosophies. I see them through the people who ultimately live with their consequences.
Most political debates begin with policies.
I have come to believe they should begin somewhere else.
They should begin with governing philosophy.
Policies rise and fall. Administrations come and go. Campaign promises are made and forgotten. But the way leaders understand the role of government often endures long after a single election has passed.
That realization came through living in Illinois, and eventually through losing my daughter.
As a lifelong Illinois resident, I have watched my home state change over decades. It did not happen through one election, one governor or one dramatic piece of legislation. It happened gradually, as ideas once considered outside the political mainstream increasingly influenced public policy. Public policy reshaped institutions. Institutions reshaped political culture. Eventually, political culture reshaped what citizens came to expect from government.
No single election transformed Illinois.
The cumulative effect did.
And Katie made the consequences of those accumulated choices impossible for me to view as abstract.
Katie was 20 years old when she was killed while visiting friends at the University of Illinois. According to court records, the intoxicated driver who killed her had previously been deported, returned to the United States and later obtained an Illinois driver's license while using false identities.
For our family, public policy ceased being politics.
It became deeply personal.
Katie taught me something I wish no parent ever had to learn.
Good intentions cannot erase consequences.
Every governing philosophy creates tradeoffs. Every public policy produces outcomes that deserve honest examination, even when those outcomes challenge our preferred narratives.
That is part of what makes the current effort to restore enforcement so important. The hard work of government is rarely as easy or politically comfortable as simply announcing what sounds compassionate. It requires enforcing laws, strengthening institutions, confronting failures and making difficult choices intended to prevent the next tragedy rather than merely responding to the last one.
For victims and their families, that distinction matters. Government cannot measure success solely by intentions. It has to ask whether institutions worked, safeguards were sufficient, warnings were heard, laws were enforced and people were protected.
That experience taught me something I wish I had understood much earlier.
Free societies cannot depend on electing perfect politicians.
They depend upon institutions that reward accountability, expose failure and make it costly for leaders to ignore the people they serve.
Institutions matter because governing philosophies eventually become embedded within them.
And once they do, changing direction becomes far more difficult than changing course before those ideas become entrenched.
Perhaps the greatest transformation is not what happens inside government.
It is what happens to the people living under it.
Citizens rarely stop caring about their communities overnight.
More often, they slowly stop believing meaningful change is still possible.
Conversations that once asked, "How do we fix this?" gradually become, "That's just the way things are."
Political cultures are not built in a day.
Neither are they surrendered in one.
They evolve gradually, through elections, policies, institutions and habits that accumulate over time.
That is why I have become less interested in campaign promises and more interested in governing philosophy.
Campaigns are designed to persuade.
Records reveal patterns.
Patterns usually govern.
When candidates seek public trust, the most revealing evidence is often not what they say during an election but what they consistently believed, advocated and prioritized before they needed anyone's vote.
That record tells us how they understand the role of government.
Ideas matter because ideas rarely remain ideas.
They become laws.
Laws influence institutions.
Institutions shape incentives.
Incentives influence behavior.
Eventually, those decisions reach beyond legislative chambers and political debates into the everyday lives of ordinary people.
I did not always understand that.
Before Katie was killed, public policy was politics to me.
After her death, I understood it never is.
The true measure of government is not how it responds when events confirm its assumptions.
It is how it responds when reality challenges them.
Every victim deserves equal dignity.
Every family deserves equal compassion.
Every government owes its citizens the humility to confront uncomfortable truths rather than dismiss them because they complicate policies it continues to defend.
That is why I have come to believe that elections should never be about personalities alone.
Nor should they be driven only by campaign messaging.
Citizens should ask a deeper question:
What governing philosophy is this candidate likely to translate into public policy?
Because ideas have destinations.
Sometimes those destinations are stronger institutions, greater accountability and healthier communities.
Sometimes they are not.
But they are never without consequence.
The safest way to understand where a governing philosophy may lead tomorrow is to examine the record that revealed it long before the campaign began.
Campaigns are moments.
Governments remain.
Ideas have destinations.
And every governing philosophy eventually becomes someone's lived experience.