Bipartisanship

In George W. Bush's victory speech after the 2004 election, he vowed with unwonted candor that he would "reach out to those who share our goals." This was depressing, since it indicated that bipartisanship means to him that everyone may march behind him in lock-step or sleep in the cold. A "uniter, not a divider" would look for common ground and build on it.

Still, blinkered as this pronouncement was, the House leadership seems not to have gotten the message: when the House and Senate conference committee produced a consensus bill to reconfigure the intelligence establishment in a way that the White House, the Senate Republicans and the House Republican leadership found acceptable, the House leadership allowed it to be derailed by two committee chairmen. Everyone involved agreed that it would have passed handily in the House if it had been brought to the floor, but the Republican leaders preferred to let it die rather than give it a straight-up floor vote that would have succeeded due in part to the support of Democrats, who were in fact marching in lock-step behind Bush and "sharing his goals" on this issue.

If this is the Republican idea of healing the electoral wounds and knitting the red and blue states into a single country again, it's going to be a very long four years... and not just for the Democrats!