Whenever he sits down to watch a sporting event on TV, my son Max always asks which team (or player) is going to win. I always say I don't know. So he asks which team is supposed to win. This tells him which team should get his affection. This is altered only slightly when we get to an event already in progress. Then he simply roots for whichever team (or player) is ahead.

There are exceptions. No matter the odds, he will root for the Carolina Hurricanes and the Missouri Tigers football team. The former is often a decided underdog. Lately, the latter is decidedly not. This is troubling to me. Football was a decided afterthought when I was in school. In order to get any students to show up for games, the athletic department had to tie football season tickets to the much more desirable basketball season tickets. I'm not really comfortable rooting for a team that wins all the time.

I'm sure there's a psychological study on people who root for chronic losers vs. those who root for perennial powerhouses. Cubs fans vs. Yankees fans, lets say. And even if the Cubbies do pull off a World Series victory this year, Yankees fans will still have their smug superiority and Chicago fans will still cringe whenever the Cubbies take the field.

This is true in politics as well. I know a lot of Democrats and a fair number of Republicans. Almost all the Democrats are nervous nellies, already convinced that Barack Obama has lost the race. Almost all the Republicans are equally sure that John McCain has won.

So do these traits actually mean something? There was the famous study released earlier this year that claimed Republicans were happier people than Democrats largely because they simply ignored the things they didn't like. This caused a stir in the punditocracy, with right-leaning folks decrying Democratic types as "whiners" (sound familiar?) and left-leaning folks calling Republican types "idiots." If nothing else, the study proved that political stereotypes are alive and well.

Truthfully, America is an overdog. Even on a day like today, when two of the biggest financial institutions in the country (Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch) face liquidation, America is still large and in charge. Even with our reputation in tatters and our armed forces bogged down in the desert, we're still the big kahuna. Nobody does it better than America--even when we do it badly.

So should we whine about our failures or simply ignore them? Here's where the one of the two major-party candidates have differed (if only slightly) from the stereotypes.

John McCain is in full denial. His pal (and economic adviser) Phil Gramm referred to a "mental recession" and called America a "nation of whiners" a few months back. His analysis has some basis in reality--the economic stimulus package did, in fact, spur the economy a bit during the summer. But it didn't change the fundamentals. And when bank after bank hits the skids, well, it's not hard to wander back to 1929. We're not there yet, and we may never make it. But this is the most serious financial crisis our country has faced since the Great Depression, no matter how much unnecessary whining is going on.

Obama does a fair bit of whining about America's travails, but he's also attempting to inspire. "Yes we can!" is not whining. "It's not about me; it's about you" is a similar attempt to bring our country together to solve its problems. I don't mind acknowledging problems as long as you also believe that we can solve them.

The truth of the matter is that America is still #1. Don't know who's #2 (China, maybe?), but the race isn't particularly close right now. We've stumbled, but we've still lapped the field. All we have to do is get to work.

Max's team, of course, is now #5. Missouri spanked poor Nevada 69-17 on Saturday, and pretty much everyone blanches at the prospect of brutalizing an undefended Buffalo this weekend.

But, as a number of Missouri players said after tying the school record for most points scored in a single game, college football is a business. And that business involves scoring as many points as you can while you're on the field. If you, as a player, let up and give the other team a break, you're not playing the game with the proper respect. If the coaches decide to run the ball up the middle every play, that's fine, but the player running up the middle had better still be trying to reach the end zone every time he touches the ball.

Geopolitics isn't a game, exactly, but the rules are the same. Playing the game right means keeping your people as safe and healthy as possible, making as many friends as you can and fighting the right wars when necessary. I don't know who's going to win the election--he'll, I'm not even sure who's ahead right now. But we haven't done so well the past eight years and it's time for America to become a two-touchdown favorite once again.

Jon Worley just loves his sports metaphors.