Public reaction to the rescue of the Chilean miners trapped for two months thousands of feet beneath a remote mountain stands in stark contrast to the reaction that followed capping of the BP oil well thousands of feet beneath the Gulf of Mexico.

Both were examples of mind-boggling technological expertise executed in extraordinarily adverse conditions over extended periods of time.

Both involved private and public enterprises, commercial and regulatory agencies and international teams of experts.

Yet for BP and the United States, response to the Gulf deep-water drilling accident was an unmitigated disaster – a technical disaster, a public relations disaster and a regulatory and energy policy disaster.

For Chile, on the other hand, response to the mining disaster has been a source of national pride and international marvel and vicarious solidarity. The thoughtful attention given to the needs of the miners trapped beneath the ground and to their relatives, friends and community on the surface – together with the apparently cooperative attitude of the international team of experts assembled to execute the rescue – stand as models of careful human deliberation and competence.

Why the vast differences in reaction?

Obviously, the ability to focus on 33 individual human beings and the daily revelations of their ordeal is more appealing than the continued gushing of oil beneath the surface of the ocean and the daily revelations of its nameless victims – wildlife and human – in the water and along the ever-spreading shoreline of the disaster’s impact.

Obviously, the multiple failures to cap the well built a history of failure, bickering and blame that has never appeared in the Chilean rescue process.

But beyond our natural tendency to identify with specific human victims and to shake our heads in dismay at repeated technical failure, there is another reason for the tears of joy, the swelling pride and the touch of envy so many have felt as they watched each of the 33 miners emerge from the rescue capsule.

Our reaction – at least in the United States – is so positive because this spectacle feeds a deeply felt need to have faith in a common set of values and to participate in a difficult, demanding yet shared enterprise.

This inspiring rescue, this marvel of cooperative competence, is juxtaposed with another U.S. election cycle of name-calling, smear tactics and dirt digging.

This election cycle evades the stark realities we all know we have to face, and instead we’re told they can be solved readily if we just reject the false and deceitful promises of X and vote for Y.

The greatest challenge our democracy – any democracy, I suppose – faces is how to integrate the necessary election process of drawing distinctions between candidates with the equally necessary but rarely achieved cooperative spirit of the governing process.

The election process seems to have become so constant, so pervasive, so personal and so desperate that its relation to the governing process seems all but forgotten.

And, more importantly, its carryover after each election cycle seems to have eroded the ability of those who win elections to acknowledge a common task or even the need to attempt to define a common task as the central purpose of governing.

Our positive reaction to the Chilean miners’ rescue contrasts with our anger at the failure of our governments – local, state and national – to demonstrate an equivalent competence.

Obviously, restructuring our broken systems of health care, education, energy and retirement is a far greater social challenge than drilling a hole into a mountain or plugging a hole under the ocean.

But the different ways these purely technical problems were addressed demonstrate how far we have to go in our continuing experiment in self-government.

And how much, beneath all the anger, we yearn to get there.

Charles Lawton is senior economist for Planning Decisions, a public policy research firm. He can be reached at: clawton@maine.rr.com.