Every election year, the horrors of hurricane season and the mock horrors of Halloween are followed by Election Day, which some find the scariest of all. Certainly this year the mud-slinging and negativity were terrifying, and gloomy predictions made it seem as if American-life-as-we-know it hung in the balance.

Campaign rhetoric in election seasons makes elected officials, and especially the President, seem responsible for the personal happiness of each and every American. Certainly The Big Guy in Washington looms large, especially on national security and that disaster of a war in Iraq, an all-time losing streak. And the men and women of Capitol Hill cast a long shadow over the rest of the country. But the national mood is also shaped by us citizens.

I'm writing this the day before Election Day with a prescription for the Day After, regardless of the final tally of seats won, seats lost, and seats still in dispute. Elections, like sports, produce winners and losers. But unlike sports, the real game gets started only after the contest. That's when passionate partisans should take off their party hats to collaborate with the opposing team. The "morning after" pill I want Americans to swallow is one that stops the divisiveness that is tearing the nation apart. So I have some advice for people on both sides of the partisan divide.

Winners, try not to gloat! For you, the hard work begins now. You are responsible for solutions for job creation, healthcare, quality of public education, affordable housing – you name it. Not to mention an honorable exit from Iraq without increasing the human costs. That demands creative thinking instead of knee-jerk ideology. A little humility is also in order, especially in light of the magnitude of the tasks. Constructive change requires patience to work through differences and gather broad support. You winners must remember that we're all in this together.

Losers, get over it! You must resist the temptation to sulk, whine, remain angry, or give up. Then you'll surely lose not just the election but the chance to make this a better place. So get up, and get back in the game. The issues that motivated you to support your candidates should motivate the losing side to do something about those challenges, especially when your preferred-but-losing candidates can't do it for you.

It's up to all of us to stay active, community by community. In declaring the end of big government, President Clinton called for the rise of Big Citizens. We need not focus on the State House or the White House to put our own house in order in every community. Even without joining the Peace Corps or today's domestic equivalent, AmeriCorps, we can heed John F. Kennedy's inaugural plea: "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." There are countless ways to make a difference, neighborhood by neighborhood and state by state. That important work shapes American life regardless of who runs things in Washington.

States, after all, are laboratories of democracy, as David Osborne's classic book had it, in which new ideas can be implemented that eventually roll out nationally. Communities, particularly urban centers, can play the same role. New programs started by social entrepreneurs can spark tremendous opportunities for innovation and change – consider the rapid growth of Habitat for Humanity and YouthBuild, which offer new ways to build low-income housing using volunteers or training young people; Teach for America, which mobilizes the brightest college graduates to serve less-advantaged schools for two years before resuming their careers; City Year, the urban youth national service corps that shaped the model for AmeriCorps and was fast to open a new site in Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; or Citizen Schools, which offers a striking new model for after-school programs for middle schoolers that raise their academic achievement while connecting them with businesses and professional firms for apprenticeships. These ideas not only solve problems now, but they also demonstrate directions for change that government can pick up on and grow. Innovation to build a brighter future often proceeds bottom-up, through our actions as philanthropists and champions of local causes, not top-down from elected officials clustered in capital cities.

In 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville, a French aristocrat, toured the young American nation seeking the essence of democracy. He found its real meaning not in the design of the federal government nor in our voting procedures but in grass-roots activism. In his book, Democracy in America, he expressed amazement at our penchant to form voluntary associations:

Americans of all ages, all stations of life, and all types of disposition are forever forming associations. ...In democratic countries knowledge of how to combine is the mother of all other forms of knowledge; on its progress depends that of all the others. In towns it is impossible to prevent [people] from assembling, getting excited together and forming sudden passionate resolves.

De Tocqueville found America riddled with contradictions that remain with us today. We are simultaneously religious and materialistic; individualistic and yet deeply involved in community affairs; isolationist and interventionist; pragmatic and ideological. I wish we could add another item to the list: being partisan until Election Day and cooperative afterward.

In our spiritual-while-secular society, it's appropriate to invoke late theologian Reinhold Niebuhr's nondenominational prayer. "Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things that can be changed, and the wisdom to know the difference." We cannot change the results of elections. But we do not have to wait for elections to change America ourselves.

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© Copyright 2006 by Rosabeth Moss Kanter.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter is the Ernest L. Arbuckle Professor at Harvard Business School. An advisor to companies and governments worldwide and an active board member of numerous non-profit organizations, she has written 16 books, including her latest bestseller, Confidence: How Winning Streaks & Losing Streaks Begin & End. Parts of this column will appear in her forthcoming book, America the Principled: The Agenda for Restoring American Strengths, which will be published by Crown next year.