CNN

ABOARD THE ELECTION EXPRESS

CLAYTON, Missouri (CNN)– As great a way as this rolling television studio of a bus is to see the United States town-by-town and block-by-block– and after a lifetime of looking, I’ve never found a better way– there is still one manner of experiencing a place that something with rubber tires can’t entirely supplant.

Every town we stop in, I try to walk for a few hours with no destination in mind, just to see where each unplanned turn and corner leads. And here in Clayton, where we’re staying in preparation for tonight’s vice presidential debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden, something that we take for granted during election years has seemed, at sidewalk level, to be a sign– literally– of encouragement and optimism during a campaign year that has often been acrimonious and ugly.

The sign is the signs themselves– the campaign signs, in each neighborhood, that families put out on their lawns for all the world, or at least all of their ZIP code, to see.

We’re frequently told these days that we are a nation at each other’s throats– that the United States is so divided and angry, each political side so suspicious of the other, that we will never find common ground. But common ground, or so it appears as you wander around the towns and villages of America, is covered with neatly (or in any case adequately) trimmed grass leading up to millions upon millions of family front doors, and it is clear, everywhere we go, that neighbors are quite at ease with declaring their disparate political loyalties while still remaining neighbors.

A small observation, perhaps, except when you consider the countries on this globe in which to disagree with the political party in power is to put oneself, and one‘s family, in genuine jeopardy.

Here in the U.S., for all the heat of this year’s campaign, you can walk the streets and see, on the same block, signs for the Republican ticket, signs for the Democratic ticket, displayed proudly on the front lawns. . .and the neighbors are still neighbors, the people pulling into the driveways still wave hello to each other at the end of a workday, the competing political passions and disagreements are not only welcomed, but cherished.

Near the corner of South Hanley Road and Country Club Court in Clayton, two homes directly across from each other display opposing signs: an Obama/Biden sign in one yard staring down a McCain/Palin sign right across the street, like two boxers checking each other out before a 15-round championship fight. The signs stay up: we’ve been here all week, getting ready for the debate, and I’ve walked by those two signs every day and of course the one family has not torn down the other family’s sign, of course, on streets all over the town, the sun goes down on the signs on neighbors’ lawns, and when the sun comes up for a new day the signs are intact.

We sometimes say we don’t trust politicians– this week, with the financial turmoil on Wall Street and in Washington, you’ve heard that a lot–and often we appear to take comfort in pretending to be a cynical, tough nation, too hardened to put our faith in anyone or anything. But every four years the signs go up; every four years neighbors proclaim their trust in political men and women they have never met and will never meet, maybe because there is no better alternative.

It’s as if the signs are really proclaiming: Our political leaders may stumble and fumble and foul up, but it’s going to take more than that to dissuade us and make us not care. The election analysts say that Missouri is a battleground state, but if this is a battleground it’s one that feels pretty civil and solid. The signs for the Democrats are in one neighbor’s yard and the signs for the Republicans are a door or three down, and this is how we do things, because it hasn’t stopped working yet.