If there is anything that makes the case American politics are now the most polarized in history, it is the finding that the partisan divide over the Iraq War is three times as sharp today as it was during the Vietnam era.

That comparison might surprise some, given that the current conflict has claimed far, far fewer American lives – less than 2,600 compared with more than 50,000 in Vietnam – and provided much less overt political opposition than the war 40 years ago.

And, even those who oppose the war in Iraq would be hard-pressed to argue that there are not greater American interests at stake in the Persian Gulf today than there were in Southeast Asia in the 1960s.

To a degree, the comparative data may reflect the transformation of the American personality over time. There is an increasing impatience in American society and other Western nations as well, today.

“Long-term” has become a matter of months, not years or decades. We want what we want when we want it. The shorter time horizon is evident in everything from the way businesses obsess over quarterly statements rather than multiyear returns, and the pressure on coaches in professional sports to win immediately or be fired, or that TV shows can be canceled after only three episodes.

One can only imagine what Franklin Roosevelt’s poll numbers would have been in the early years of World War II when the Japanese and the Germans were winning the war. But then, there weren’t gruesome television pictures bombarding Americans 24 hours a day, nor analysts telling anyone who read a newspaper or watched television about the potential catastrophe around the corner.

Or perhaps it is the fact that the Republicans, who are generally less wary of foreign intervention and the use of force, were the opposition party during much of the Vietnam era. They were not that opposed to Democratic President Lyndon Johnson’s war policy, and in fact, the major opposition came from within LBJ’s own party …

But with George Bush in the White House and Republicans in control of Congress, the Democrats are the opposition party today. By their political nature they are more reflexively wary of using military force, and therefore this president enjoys little support for his policy among his political opponents.

And, of course, there is the reality that the six years of Bush’s presidency have divided the country along partisan lines over a variety of other issues and created the kind of combative political climate in Washington unknown 40 years ago.

The New York Times/CBS News poll taken last month found a 50-point partisan split over the war rightness of the U.S. involvement in Iraq.

Three quarters of self-identified Republicans say the United States was correct in taking military action against Iraq, compared to 24 percent of self-identified Democrats. Independents split just about down the middle.

The Pew Research Center for the Press said that its analysis of public opinion polls from 1966-73 found that the partisan split over Vietnam was never greater than 18 points, the Times reported.

During that era, anti-war marches frequently brought out hundreds of thousands of protesters and led to the downfall of many politicians, including Johnson, who decided not to seek re-election because of the anti-war fervor.

Yet, Bush was re-elected two years into the war in Iraq in an election that saw his Democratic opponent, John Kerry, decline to campaign for withdrawal, although he has since changed his tune. And although there have been anti-war demonstrations these days, they have not carried the cachet that they did during Vietnam.

One might even suppose that the contemporary public sense of insecurity because of the Sept. 11 attacks and threat of terrorism here at home might reduce, rather than increase, the partisan divide over Iraq. After all, 40 years ago, no one was worried that the Viet Cong might blow up the Pentagon or the World Trade Center, had it been built at the time.

It is hard to understand why the partisan divide over Iraq is so much greater today when the objective cost of the war has been so much less than it was in Vietnam. But whatever the reason, it is not good news for American society.