Despite the clear and persistent failure of the Bush Administration in every realm and from every perspective (fiscal conservatives can't be pleased with the spiraling debt and deficit or the prospect of sustained nation building; libertarians can't be pleased with the steady erosion of civil liberties; supporters of the military can't be pleased with the disdain for and shoddy treatment of soldiers past, present, and future; moralists can't be pleased with the peddling of influence and the roughly weekly revelations of scandal; and progressives can't be pleased with much of anything), the President still enjoys the approval of anywhere from 41 to 48 percent of those polled, while one in three of those Americans asked approve of even his handling of the war in Iraq. Those respondents represent tens of millions of Americans. It's easy enough to dismiss them, to deride them, or seek to explain their delusion from a position of superior clarity and understanding, but however strong that impulse is, however justified it may seem, it won't work. First, just about any analysis that begins with the assumption of superior knowledge is bound to go awry. Second, dismissal, derision, and smug pedantic exercises don't accomplish anything. And finally, such a large proportion of our citizenry cannot be shunned or excluded without undermining any possibility of a healthy national discourse or a shared sense of national identity.

Those who would still vote for President Bush must be given the dignity and respect of being presumed rational, intelligent people. I'm very concerned that the American polity, which has been cracking, has been finally broken by Bush's presidency and his penchant for polarization, and for that reason, I think it's crucial that he not be re-elected. But I'm even more concerned that the possibility of repairing the polity be maintained, and for that reason, I think that the way in which he is defeated in November is even more important than its happening. This cannot become an electoral repeat of the Civil War, leaving tensions and resentments to seethe and erupt for more than a hundred years afterward. Abject defeat of President Bush's followers and revenge for all of the wrongs that may have been committed at his behest won't serve anything but his opponents' sense of satisfaction. His supporters are as vital a part of this nation as any other group, and to behave otherwise is to deny some of our most treasured national dogmas.

So what are we to do if we hope to see President Bush productively defeated at the polls this fall? The last few presidential elections suggest three related maxims that might prove helpful:

• Don't insult someone's candidate: For many people, a presidential candidate is more than a pragmatic choice. They invest their candidate with their most deeply held hopes and fears (often without being aware that they're doing so); they see their candidate as a projection of their beliefs, of what's best in themselves; they identify with their candidate and the community surrounding that candidate. Insulting their candidate isn't going to induce them to see things from a different perspective or examine the facts and their beliefs any more than insulting them will. In short, if you want someone to vote for your candidate, you won't get them to do so by insulting their candidate.

• Proving someone wrong won't convince them that you're right: Starting with Al Franken's books, and continuing with his radio program and the Air America network as a whole, media punditry is becoming an elaborate exercise in debunking. Although it's abundantly clear that so much of the national political discourse has devolved to innuendo, deception, and demagoguery (for which the Bush Administration must share the blame) and that it would benefit from some systematic clarification, the cacophony of claims, counter-claims, and outright insults aren't making anyone better informed or changing anyone's mind. Yes, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Al Franken's other targets frequently resort to deception and outright lies--that's easily demonstrated--and I suspect that their audience might even be aware of that. But that audience firmly believes in the underlying reality that those lies are meant to illustrate. The lies are believed because, in the audience's minds, they should be true. It's that underlying emotional reality that must be addressed, not the attempts to marshall facts to demonstrate that reality.

• No one wants to be made to feel stupid: A frequent criticism of Al Gore during the campaign leading up to the last election was variously phrased as he's "too intellectual," "too academic," "too cold," "too much of a know-it-all," etc. Those are all variations on the complaint that "he makes me feel stupid" (something that George W. Bush never did), and which is different than being made to feel that "Al Gore is smarter than me." This might be attributed to America's supposed anti-intellectualism, but the truth is more complex. The distinction can be illustrated by considering President Clinton, who is certainly Al Gore's intellectual equal. Despite the intense hatred that many feel toward him, no one seems to begrudge him his intelligence. Or to cite an even clearer example, there were few public figures more beloved or respected than Albert Einstein. This is because, along with his obvious intelligence, his profound wisdom and abundant good will were clear. He, like President Clinton, never came across as a shrill pedant.

What we must recognize, and what we as a nation are no longer capable of accommodating, is that emotional experience is as important to social reality as are empirical facts and moral claims. Just about every party to the national discourse is angry, and the emotional truth is that anger is generally an expression of fear and sadness. At least one third (and maybe nearly half) of Americans seem to believe strongly that President Bush addresses their hopes and fears. Whether their assessment of his accomplishments is empirically correct is beside the point. Their hopes and fears are real, and those hopes and fears must be addressed if we ever hope to have anything like a whole nation. The center of contention seems to be the politics of identity. The vast majority of the participants in the national discourse seem to divide the world into people like themselves and people not like themselves, and to believe that the interactions between those two groups are zero sum transactions--that they and those like themselves can only gain at the expense of those not like themselves; and that the gains of those not like themselves will come at their own expense or the expense of those like themselves. That progressives can only gain at the expense of conservatives (and vice versa) and the poor can only gain at the expense of the rich (and vice versa) are fast becoming broadly held fundamental political beliefs. I don't accept that. I expect more than that from this nation's great potential.

This nation once enjoyed a broadly held emotional commitment to its greatness. I know that that's a sweeping claim, but I don't believe that abundant natural resources and a mercenary spirit are alone sufficient to explain this nation's unprecedented assumption of international hegemony. But now, the left rests in its certainty of intellectual superiority, the right rests in its certainty of moral and spiritual superiority, and they both contend for control of the emotional realm. The first impulse of either side is to attack and vilify the other, not to seek the common good. Our population is no longer the best educated, the healthiest, the best fed, or the least impoverished in the world. For most of our history, these facts alone would have been sufficient to mobilize monumental efforts to address them, but that is no longer so. Even the events of September 11, 2001, which united and inspired us for a moment, have only managed to spur misguided and ineffective responses accompanied by cynicism and partisan warfare. A little more than forty years ago, President Kennedy exhorted us to "ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country." Today, that sounds hopelessly quaint. Any politician issuing such a challenge in all seriousness would be dismissed as unrealistic or demagogic. But that is precisely what we all must do. We can no longer look to our party as our primary means of political identification. We can no longer seek the defeat of those not sharing that identification as our primary means of political satisfaction. We must aspire to more, because attaining that won't be the result of anything but our shared striving after it above all else. This fall's election must not be lost by a craven, incompetent incumbent; it must be won be a candidate who can articulate a compelling ideal to which we can all aspire.