Now that the election is over, the Democrat party leaders are calling for bipartisanship. Republicans are being urged to “cross the aisle” and join with Democrats and work toward helping the new president achieve his goals, make good his promises of “change” and “hope,” and the usual political hot air.

Bipartisanship is a desirable situation for the party in power. If both sides agree, then the president’s legislation gets passed and everyone is happy. If it later turns out that the new law either fails to produce the desired result or it is an outright disaster, the president can cite the fact that the other side voted for it too and thus escape the sole blame. Being able to share the blame is almost as desirable as bipartisanship in Washington.

Some may remember President Bush’s campaign promise back in 2000, to be a "uniter not a divider." He also promised to "return dignity" to the office. After eight years of Bill Clinton, the country was ready for someone less partisan and definitely someone who respected the office of president—well, half the country anyway. From the time he took office, President Bush reached out to Democrats in an attempt to get along with them. That was a campaign promise he should have broken, in my opinion, because every time he extended his hand, it was bitten. He is too decent and has too much integrity to get down and mud wrestle with the Democrats when they called him names. That too, in my opinion, was another mistake. He should have stood up for himself. At least leading Republicans should have made an issue of the continual insults and ridicule. Perhaps if they had, his popularity today wouldn’t be as low as it is.

The Speaker of the house, Nancy Pelosi said that President Bush is "an incompetent leader," a "man with no judgment" and a "liar."  Senate majority leader Harry Reid has called the president “stupid,” a “loser,” and a “liar.”  On the floor of the U.S. Senate, Senator Ted Kennedy accused the president of being a liar by claiming that Bush had "cooked up the war (against Saddam Hussein's regime) in Texas."  Hillary Clinton said, among other mean-spirited things: "I sometimes feel that Alfred E. Newman is in charge in Washington" and "I predict to you that this administration will go down in history as one of the worst that has ever governed our country." The media, pundits and left-wing bloggers said much worse things.

It seems to me that the quality of political discourse, particularly from the Democrats, has gone downhill since President Bush was elected. I think that party has been “Clintonized.” There isn’t enough space here to list all the scandals and downright disgusting things that President Clinton and his administration were involved in. These aren’t just scurrilous charges from a certified hardnosed Republican like me, but facts that have been documented and in some cases charged in court. Telling lies, getting caught in them and smearing their opponents was common place during the Clinton tenure. Respect for the office of president has continued to decrease over the Bush years. Continually belittling the president and making him into a joke is a tactic that seems to have worked in the Democrat’s favor over the last eight years, so I’m ready for a change on the way Washington works.

Bipartisanship sounds like a splendid idea and as a magnanimous guy I’m all for giving the Democrats exactly the same bipartisanship that they and their friends in the media have shown President Bush over the last eight years. As the cliché goes, one good turn deserves another, or perhaps better put: “what comes around, goes around.”