The more I hear from liberals, the more I think there’s a yet-undiscovered gloom gene that makes them so sour. Here’s Frank Rich, onetime NYT theater critic, now op-edist.

Economic anxiety is the new terrorism. This is why the most relevant snapshot of voters’ concerns was not to be found at Saddleback Church but at the Olympics last Saturday. For all the political press’s hype, only some 5.5 million viewers tuned in to the Rev. Rick Warren’s show in Orange County, Calif. Roughly three-quarters of them were over 50 — in other words, the McCain base. By contrast, a diverse audience of 32 million Americans tuned in to Beijing that night to watch Michael Phelps win his eighth gold medal.

This was a rare feel-good moment for a depressed country.

 Oh, please. Speak for yourself.

But the unsettling subtext of the Olympics has been as resonant for Americans as the Phelps triumph. You couldn’t watch NBC’s weeks of coverage without feeling bombarded by an ascendant China whose superior cache of gold medals and dazzling management of the Games became a proxy for its spectacular commercial and cultural prowess in the new century.

China has a pool of 1.3 billion potential athletes. That they won so many medals is no cause for surprise or alarm.

Besides, isn’t this petty and small? I liked watching the perfection of the Chinese divers. Who cares if they’re American or Chinese. I thought libs were such internationalists.

Even before the Olympics began, a July CNN poll found that 70 percent of Americans fear China’s economic might — about as many as find America on the wrong track. Americans watching the Olympics could not escape the reality that China in particular and Asia in general will continue to outpace our country in growth while we remain mired in stagnancy and debt (much of it held by China).

Reality check: James Fallows, a former Jimmy Carter speech writer and respected journalist, has been living in China for two years. He wrote:

I think if more Americans came to China right now and saw how hard so many of its people are struggling just to survive, they too might ask: What are we thinking, in considering China an overall threat? Yes, its factories are formidable, and its weight in the world is huge. But this is still a big, poor, developing nation trying to solve the emergency of the moment.

Susan Shirk, of the University of California at San Diego, recently published a very insightful book that calls China a “fragile superpower.” “When I discuss it in America,” she told me, “people always ask, ‘What do you mean, fragile?’” When she discusses it here in China, “they always ask, ‘What do you mean, superpower?’”

Back to frettin’ Frank Rich:

How we dig out of this quagmire is the American story that Obama must tell. It is not a story of endless conflicts abroad but a potentially inspiring tale of serious economic, educational, energy and health-care mobilization at home.

Decoded, that means government intrusion in the economy.

If nothing else, the Chinese example demonstrates the power of unrestrained capitalism. It’s miraculous growth would be impossible in the USA because we have environmental laws and checks on capitalists (gladly so).

Americans must band together for change before the new century leaves us completely behind. The Obama campaign actually has plans, however imperfect or provisional, to set us on that path; the McCain campaign offers only disposable Band-Aids typified by the “drill now” mantra that even McCain says will only have a “psychological” effect on gas prices.

Band together how? We are doing quite well with our free economy in which millions of citizens steer the course through their buying decisions.

Like most liberals, Rich sees economic growth as a zero sum game: if China gets richer, then somebody else must be getting poorer. This is both idiotic and dangerous because it informs too much of Democrat thinking.

We should celebrate China’s rebirth. When we trade together, play sports together, share our movies and music, we’re at peace. That’s the goal, no?