n America, we have this hangup about losing.
What's the first taunt that toddlers learn? ''LOSER!!!''
''You lose'' is one of the worst things you can say to someone of fragile ego. But losing represents exactly one-half of all of human enterprise. How do I know? I watch TV. Anything with a ball in it. And while we are as a nation preoccupied with winning, we neglect the positive, healthful, and upbeat attributes of losing.
Take football. There's a winner, and a loser. Usually. OK, once in a while there's a tie. ''A tie is like kissing your sister,'' some ex-jock with a microphone will invariably say. They must have it on tape. But ties, like the one we are wrangling about in this year's presidential election, are rare. In football, at the end of the season, the ties don't matter. All through the playoffs, somebody wins, and somebody loses, and then we all go home, or, if we're watching on TV, we usually are home, so we go to the refrigerator. In baseball, there's never a tie; theoretically, you keep playing forever till someone becomes a winner. And, inevitably, someone else a loser.
And the Bush-Gore election selection inexorably means the rejection of the one who doesn't win. It's pretty clear that the Florida authorities have botched their count, fiddling and diddling and playing partisan games. Now the US Supreme Court is in the act, which means that that body will get tangled up in this rotting fishing net of a political tussle.
It's about winning, sure. But it's also about losing. Each side's front man has a lot riding on the deal done when nine robed justices sit around the table and cut the cards. George ''Rutherford'' Bush loses, and he may be cooked. Sure, he goes back to being governor of Texas. But Michael Dukakis went back to being governor of Massachusetts, and the recession cut in, and he was finished. And if Jeb Bush turns out to be the governor who couldn't deliver his own state to his own brother when everything hinged on that, Brother Jebediah is finished as a force in national politics as well. Stick a fork in that Bush dynasty.
If Al Gore comes out on the short end, it's hard to see how he remains the titular chief of the Democratic Party, with no office, no staff, nobody for official company but Tipper. Most Democrats feel Gore should have run a better campaign, and that with a better pol at the top of the ticket, they would have taken both House and Senate as well as renewing the lease on 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
The worst way to lose is losing close, losing after almost winning, losing by blowing a big lead and early advantages. Both Gore and Bush blew early advantages. Gore collapsed in the middle of the fall campaign, going somnambulant in his second debate, then failing to lance the boil of the Nader challenge from the left.
But Bush fell victim to the old sitting-on-our-lead syndrome, wasting time and money in states where he would lose, and failing to nail down Florida, then using extra-inning chicanery and muscle from his brother, the Florida Legislature, and some county canvassing boards and local judges determined to disenfranchise potential Gore votes.
But losing is in store for one or the other, most likely Gore, in my view, and that has been my view since election night. Bag jobs happen in politics, and the vice president, with ultimately himself to blame, most probably will have to face up shortly to losing.
I can offer some help on that score. As it does on any given day to half of all the baseball teams, and half of all the football teams, and half of all the other kinds of ball clubs, losing happens. Not just to gladiatorial professionals. To all of us. We lose jobs, spouses, kids to drugs and worse, dogs to old age, loved ones to whatever.
In the happy-talk world of television, which is often mistaken for real life, and in the soured-stomach world of talk radio, which no sentient adult should mistake for anything at all resembling real life, losing is verboten. It is not supposed to happen. And when it inevitably does, it is to be denounced, denied, and covered up as rapidly as possible.
The pop cultural view of losing as pain and winning as pleasure spilled over into our national dialogue. Remember all the babble about who ''lost'' China? The Red-baiters of the Right made careers out of blaming Harry Truman, the Democrats, and Dean Acheson for ''losing'' a remote country that only has about five times as many people as live here. ''Lost''? I don't think so. But we went through the same rigamarole over who ''lost'' Vietnam. Did we really ''lose'' it? When so many Vietnamese are over here. And now their first homeland is begging us to come back, and bring greenbacks?
So my advice to the vice president is to take the long view about losing, if that is in the cards. Al, you were not much of a campaigner, but you could be a great loser, depending on how much class and dignity you show in stepping down, when and if that day comes, as I see it coming, and sooner rather than later.
Do not shrink from the glory of losing. It's hard to lose. Along the way, I've lost friends over minor beefs, I've been dumped by girlfriends, I lost out on jobs I lusted for, I once lost a football game all by myself; it takes some deep breathing and stretching and long walks and rainy nights for the pain to go away. But go it does, eventually.
And the thing to remember is that we are all losers, at one time or another. It's how you lose that lasts in the memories of others. It is not shameful to not win. Forget about that trite sports page guff, ''Show me a good loser and I'll show you a loser.'' In the end, we are all losers. So cheer up, and go out with your head high. You have no control over those on the other side, whether they are vicious or vindictive or sore winners. All you can take care of is your own business. So lose well. It's not so bad once you get the hang of it.
David Nyhan is a Globe columnist.
