Bipartisanship of Oz

Steven Thomma recently wrote a prescient analysis of what is likely to be the outcome of Dubya's call for bipartisanship, after nearly six years of "my way or the highway" bravado, and equating the dem's with terrorists.

George Bush tried to go home Tuesday night.

His goal was what he thought he left behind in Texas when he was a Republican governor with a Democratic legislature. But the mythical bipartisan place he tried to reach out to in his State of the Union address Tuesday was never like the one he romanticized in Texas. It's not what he's built in six years in Washington. And today it's as elusive as Oz.

"Our citizens don't much care which side of the aisle we sit on," he said, "as long as we're willing to cross that aisle when there's work to be done."

Yet the chasm between the parties is wide and deep, the politics between them are poisonous and Bush bears much of the blame.

After reaching out to Democrats his first year, Bush governed after the 2001 terrorist attacks as the leader of a one-party state.