Could we please shut up about patriotism for a little while? Can't we just, for crying out loud, give this poor, tortured word a quiet and hard-earned rest for the day?

Not likely, and not today. The word (if not the sentiment) is certain to be dragged up and down the Main Street of every American burg, and around the block by every political commentator, before the first firework of the evening pops. "Patriotism" is the viral word-of-the-week with which we media types will keep compulsively infecting one another until an exciting new one catches fire.

In ordinary years, patriotism – amor patriae, "love of country" – is a kind of dusty holiday decoration that gets pulled out of the attic and displayed on the porch for the Fourth of July. It's a topic for kids' essay contests or the old codgers down at the VFW, not something you talk much about around the office. It's kinda personal, kinda uncool.

But like werewolves baying beneath the full moon, we alter the rules for the election season. All of a sudden, we're talking about it all the time! We cannot get enough of parsing patriotism, weighing its definitions, bickering over who has more of it, conducting polls about it and writing worrisome essays with such titles as "The Far Right's Patriotism Problem" and "Obama Defends His Patriotism."

The unspoken supposition is that U.S. voters are such a pack of country simpletons that they're entirely riveted to all this. It brings to mind a classic Simpsons episode in which even a one-eyed totalitarian space alien can achieve the presidency by running on a platform of "miniature American flags for all!"

Here's an idea: Let's quit ruminating over Barack Obama's lapel pin and how John McCain's war record plays in the blue states, because that is not what people care about right now.

They care about how they're going to pay the electric bill, and how long it will take a new generation of cheap and fuel-efficient cars to reach the market. They wonder whether it's time to ratchet back in Iraq or sprint for the finish line.

They're a lot more interested in how much it costs to buy a jug of milk and a box of cornflakes than in what one lumbering network news essay larded with poll numbers this week called the "political patriotism gap."

People who are worried about keeping their jobs are not especially preoccupied with the nuances of who-loves-America-more. They don't have the spare time to listen to a three-hour talk show about whether ours is "the greatest nation in the history of the world" or just a bloated, overbearing tyrant that needs to be more like France.

I wish somebody would rise above the rabble and proclaim a refined definition, a patriotism rooted not in lapel pins and never-ending political bickerfest, but in practicality.

It's not without precedent. This nation has risen to greatness in the past by answering crisis with innovation, optimism and adaptability.

OK, somebody splash cold water on me quick before I start coughing up moldy clichés about "can-do spirit."

But there's a sweet kernel of reality in the clichés. These are traditional American virtues, and it's a crying shame that they're so out of fashion right now when we have a legitimate use for them.

I'm just not sure we can afford the luxury of more campaigning grounded in finger-wagging, playground taunts and cynical "soft expectations" about the gullibility of the electorate.

Maybe the Fourth of July could mark the day this year we start talking seriously about real problems and what we're going to have to do to fix them. Maybe this is the day we start getting people on board with the idea that things are changing, but with the encouraging reminder that Americans have endured change before.

That would be patriotic.