Lately I’ve been driving like a little old lady, cautiously and creepily. I smile when some rude ignoramus cuts me off in traffic and I raise my hand in a five-finger wave instead of a middle-digit salute whenever a cell-phone chattering maniac runs a red light directly into my path.

My newfound good courtesy is not the result of ingestion of a perfect anti-anxiety pill or a personal resolution to become a model of exemplary behavior on the American highway. Rather, it’s because—for the first time in at least a decade—I have placed a political bumper strip on the back of my car.

Time was that I thought nothing of boldly displaying my political beliefs on my sleeve or the backside of my vehicle. But that was before the day of rampant road rage and occasional drive-by shootings. In recent years, I had allowed no messages of any kind on my car, not even one of those little yellow-on-blue equal signs that almost no one knows the meaning of except for members of the Human Rights Campaign. I had become frightened that using my van as a billboard of support for a cause or candidate might make me (or my car) susceptible to the tirades of those who disagreed with me: the right-to-lifers and "Bushwomen" and especially the dudes in beat-up pickup trucks with red-white-and-blue stickers that read, "If you’re not with us, you’re against us."

When one is driving down a busy freeway or country back road, it’s difficult to engage such folk in a sprightly dialogue about the meaning of being "with us." But it is exactly because I am a caring American patriot that I have decided to take a risk this summer and make a public display of my politics. Besides, my van is getting a little older now and if an angry soul with a perspective different than mine smacks my bumper a bit too hard or strikes a house key against my sun-blistered paint job, I can live with the consequences of exercising my freedom of expression.

After the first few days of motoring with my message, I have gained a little more faith in my fellow Americans. Although my daily commute is about 60 miles, nobody has demonstrated any more road outrage toward me than usual. A few people think I’m moving too slowly, but no one has blown a horn or shaken a fist because of my bumper strip. Yet, that hasn’t completely relieved my unease. Because, as with writing a magazine column, the last thing I want my driving to do is sway people AWAY from my beliefs.

In order to win converts, I have become a mobile public-relations campaign for my candidate. My daily drive, which used to take about 45 minutes each way, now requires more than two hours in total. I stop the moment a traffic light turns yellow, but I don’t brake too fast, not wanting to jolt the driver approaching my message from behind. I slow to allow people pulling out of a parking lot to glide in ahead of me and try never to cut another driver off in traffic—even those with messages on their vehicles that infuriate me.

Although being a good citizen is definitely a pain, I’m happy to have my voice counted on the roadway once again. My bumper sticker renews an old family tradition. When my sister and I were children taking long auto trips with our parents, our father came up with a game to occupy our time. State-by-state, wherever we drove, we would count and tabulate the number of bumper strips we spotted for various national and local candidates for office. Dad’s surveys became so reliable that our hometown newspaper reported their results every election year, as if ours were important Gallup polls. Perhaps our greatest moment of glory came in 1960 when the family research showed John Kennedy eking out a victory over Richard Nixon; we predicted the results correctly in nearly a dozen hotly contested Eastern and Midwestern states where we had traveled.

Nowadays, there are more bumper strips adorning cars and trucks than ever, but it wouldn’t be easy to use them to gauge the state of the presidential race as we did when I was a kid. Most of the contemporary messages we see on cars are vague ("United We Stand"), goofy ("My Kid Made the Honor Roll at Kiddy Corral Kindergarten"), or reflective of far right causes. Yes, many gay people stand up and are counted with rainbow colors, but few of us get specific about the candidates we believe will best represent our concerns.

I think that more of us should summon the courage and let the world know whom we support in the Presidential election via a good old-fashioned bumper strip. There is strength in numbers, and our messages might make others reflect on their own choices. Not to mention the fact that we’d likely become a nation of more courteous motorists, at least for the duration of the campaign.

Well, some of us would become kinder and gentler motorists. I have asked my other half, John, not even to consider putting a bumper strip (in our case, a Kerry-Edwards sticker) on the VW convertible he tools around in. In his middle-aged revelry, he thinks he’s a racecar driver at Daytona, and the way he hurtles through traffic it would be more beneficial to our ticket if no one on the road knew of John’s support. In fact, I just had an idea. If John would simply cover the Bug with stickers for our opponent, there’s no doubt how the election would turn out this year...