In the metropolitan Seattle area, there is likely an even larger segment of the populace -- angered by the antics of the party in power and anxious to be rid of a group that has turned out to be such a national embarrassment -- that eagerly anticipates the election outcomes in the hope that we can reclaim a sense of pride in our nation and a renewed confidence in those we choose to lead it.

The other half of the country undoubtedly fears that the election will also mark the beginning of the end -- the end of a determined and largely successful effort to halt the liberal advance that has marked the nation's politics for much of the past half century.

This portion of America -- after capturing statehouses and congressional delegations throughout the South and the nation's heartland, after enacting reams of legislation designed to preserve and protect values that it believes are the bedrock of American society, and after securing an ideological majority on the High Court to ensure that its political victories prevail -- is afraid it will all come undone, if it does not hold onto the reins of power.

Our nation probably has not been so polarized since the Civil War. And it cannot escape notice that, although we are a much larger and far more diverse country than we were a century and a half ago, the political battle lines today geographically are drawn essentially where they were then. There remains, even after 150 years, a largely North-South, urban-rural divide in America, with the West Coast more politically in tune with the North, the Western hinterlands more Southern in values and perspectives, and the suburbs and exurbs conflicted as to which side of the divide to join.

Ironically, the issues that divide the nation have not changed fundamentally in 150 years. Then it was slavery -- but slavery posed for Americans in the 19th century some of the same moral questions and contradictions that the immigration debate and the clamor about gay rights present today. (Perhaps not surprisingly, a generation after the Civil War ended, the nation found itself in turmoil over what to do about the floodtide of immigrants coming to these shores.)

Then, as now, it was about war, but unlike the present, war was seen on the eve of the clash between the states, in both the North and the South, as a tragic measure of last resort, not as a handy tool of national will. (As a historical side note, Abraham Lincoln vigorously denounced President Polk for unnecessarily, in Lincoln's view, launching the war with Mexico in 1846. Lincoln declared Polk's argument -- "that if it shall become necessary to repel invasion, the President may, without violation of the Constitution ... invade the territory of another country" -- permitted the chief executive "to make war at pleasure" and subject the American people to "the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions.")

Ironically also, both sides of the divide in this political drama are driven largely by fear. One side fears what America will revert to, if it is no longer in charge of defining and determining what is right and acceptable in American society. The other side fears what this nation has become in the past half-dozen years and will become even more so, if those who presently hold power are not stopped in their tracks.

Those in power have artfully used the fear of that half of the nation that believes it knows what is right and best for all of us, and combined it with the pervasive anxiety across the country about the possibility of another terrorist attack, to appeal to the most base instincts of the American people.

We've become a nation fearful of new minorities in our midst, willing to tolerate, in the name of patriotism, the enactment of gross violations of our cherished freedoms, indifferent to the worst kinds of abuse done in the name of our security, and disdainful of the opinion of other nations and peoples about our conduct.

We're capable of far better. In about 10 days, we'll see how it all turns out.

Hubert G. Locke, Seattle, is a retired professor and former dean of the Daniel J. Evans Graduate School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington.

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