We know the saying, “Life imitates art.”

But this week, something more interesting happened. This week, life contradicted art.

In an art form previously reserved for adolescent boys, a hero returned from the dead while others were dropping like flies on CNN. This week saw the death of three presidential campaigns and the resurrection of a man who fights crime and wears the American flag.

Fred Thompson, Rudolph Guiliani and John Edwards have fallen by the wayside — but have no fear, because Marvel Comics has brought Captain America back from the dead. The hero, who fell with the crack of a gun in 2007, returned to the cover in issue 34 of “Captain America.”

This raises the question: Why do we love a superhero so much that we bring it back to life? And why do real American heroes die off in the press and become another matter of the passing day? The answer lies in American idealism.

You can’t deny that in recent years the fanboy craze has spread across the nation. With the success of movies such as “Spiderman,” “Batman Begins” and “The Fantastic Four,” the evidence is stacked: We love the hero. At the risk of sounding corny, they’ve “gotta be strong” and they’ve “gotta be fast” and they’ve “gotta be fresh from the fight.”

Consider the past history of superhero resurrection: Spiderman was once buried alive and lived, Superman was killed by Doomsday and came back faster than a Rocky montage, and now the persona of Captain America is back, despite having already survived World War II and being frozen in a glacier. Let’s see Barack Obama do any of that.

The truth is that superheroes, no matter how fictional, embody a core American ideal. They have an immense sense of responsibility for their fellow man. Politicians don’t beat up people who break the law. They don’t scrape pennies to get a campaign going — most of the time, that is done with contributions from the wealthy. When the president goes home, he has servants (not Alfred) and chefs who make his dinner. The true embodiment of America, the real men and women who run the show, are nothing like some fantasy we carry around with us. Ron Paul doesn’t even fly!

There are no men in tights who risk their necks for the rest of us. The real truth is pieces of that American idealism we wrap superheroes is dispersed rather thinly. It’s easy to breathe new life into an old idea. It’s comforting.

I can’t deny that I’m one of the many who look for real Americans on the silver screen or in glossy pages, but that shouldn’t be the only way. Real change is done by people who invest their ideals into politics.

The real world has real problems and real people. Sometimes politicians seem as odd as a Cyclops/White Queen love affair. So take a lesson from yourselves. Those dollars we shell out to watch the hero win the day show that some shred of American idealism lives inside most of us.

That’s why the superhero never dies. As Ben Parker said, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

I have a feeling that if the idealism which resurrected Captain America was used at the polls, we’d see some real heroes.