Does Matt Santos really have to be fictional?

In director M. Night Shyamalan's incredible "The Village," there is a small band of people who speak in an archaic register filled with "thee" and "thou," who settle their policy differences through town meetings, and who live a simple life of chores and small pleasures. The adults in this Village, surrounded by a menacing forest, all came from the "Towns," where, to hear them tell it, violence reigns and venality is the norm.

Judging by public life today, many of us would like to live in this Village. You can tell, in part, by what the political parties are peddling. On the right, the rhetoric of values, if taken at face value, sounds downright Athenian in its high-mindedness. Recapture personal morality and life will be simpler, the choices clearer.

On the left, there is an emerging back-to-basics consensus that includes a sort of pugnacious honesty coupled with a faith in the little guy's eventual rising. Howard Dean's ascent to chair of the Democratic Party was fueled by equal parts enthusiasm for his honest style and infatuation with the idea that the Dean "netroots" would somehow reempower the masses. He embodied a story of yesterday (the forthright outsider makes good) and brought a veneer of new technology. But, what ultimately made Mr. Dean palatable was his eight-point plan to revitalize the party, a plan that amounts to little more than "be more organized" - a back-to-basics tack if ever there was one.

Each side, viewing itself at a sort of inflection point where either legacy or survival are at stake, would like to turn back the clock. Each side yearns to recapture something it feels is lost.

But it can't happen. The fundamental characteristic of nostalgia is that it is a desire for a time that never really was.

Some of my friends seem to inhabit an alternate America. Sometimes I live there, too. In this America, Jed Bartlet is president and there is a campaign going on to succeed him. This is America as portrayed on "The West Wing." In this America, everybody is smart, speaks quickly and amusingly, and always has an abiding sense of political idealism. Operatives remind one another, at seemingly every turn, about why they got into politics in the first place. They're in it to make a difference. Sometimes these people lose their way, but there's always a character onscreen who can gently remind them that democracy is really all about helping people.

In this America, a Texas congressman named Matt Santos is running an underdog campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. But he is giving his jaded D.C.-insider campaign manager fits. Not only will he not run "negative ads," but he insists that, if he criticizes his opponent, he will only do so personally, in his own voice. He wanders off the talking points and doesn't follow the script for important meetings. The sophisticates that surround him all gnash their teeth at his starry-eyed democracy mumbo-jumbo and Frank Capra antics.

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