Those of us who thought that the bruising election battle of 2000 might lead the Washington press corps to be a bit more critical of our new president are going through a rude awakening.

Remember during the transition when a broad scope of authority was given to Dick Cheney? Ah, those halcyon days of December. The story of the moment was that Bush was too much of an intellectual lightweight to have the full burdens of the presidency thrust upon him, so Uncle Dick and his wiser, older compadres were coming in to run the show.

Then the honeymoon began. According to the new storyline, President George W. Bush is now the healer that President-elect Bush wanted to be. After all, he invited Edward Kennedy, of all people, to the White House to watch a movie. He showed up at Democratic gatherings. He invited the Congressional Black Caucus in for a sit-down. Truly, this is a man who must be willing to work with Democrats, if he can stand to be in the same room with them.

So now that Bush has a properly “presidential” storyline, Cheney no longer has to be the grown-up. In a front-page article by Dana Milbank in today’s Washington Post, Uncle Dick now has “unprecedented power in the White House.” He has “integrated the vice presidential staff seamlessly with the presidential staff.” His chief of staff will be invited to every meeting that Bush’s chief will be attending.

Just a few scant weeks ago, this would have raised serious questions—at least in passing—about GWB’s ability to handle the scope of the presidency himself. Now, it’s a measure of his openness and willingness to have two heads in the White House. Why, one might ask? Because Cheney is somehow the first vice president since 1929 to have no presidential aspirations himself.

Consider me a heretic, but I would have thought that the first qualification of the vice president would be a willingness to assume the top office. Cheney gets a magical twofer: he has risen above the petty politics that consume the rest of us in Washington, and so long as he has the power and authority of the presidency, he’s magnanimously willing to forego the title. (The article is quick to say that Bush will always get final say, although if all of the heavy lifting is being done by Cheney, one wonders what criteria Bush might use to override him.)

Meanwhile, Bush rides the wave of bipartisanship, even as Ashcroft, Norton, and Thompson get busy in their Cabinet posts. The last president who crossed the partisan line was, of course, our last president, who set up the Nader wing by using Dick Morris’ “triangulation” policy and made his second term seem more like a moderate Republican’s than a Democrat’s. Welfare was ended “as we knew it”, largely by ending it entirely. Clinton was rewarded for his political centrism by the kindness and deference extended to him by the Republican party during the impeachment.

So forgive me if I want to see some Clinton-style centrism from Bush before I get all mushy over his bipartisanship. There have been some concrete actions here—notably the incredible Republican conversion to supporting Americorps as part of Bush’s religious funding proposals—but that has to be measured against his immediate gutting of global women’s health programs. (US funds weren’t being used for abortion anyway; Bush’s cut of aid shuts down funding to anyone who might provide family planning or referrals for abortion.) A similar standard in his religious funding system would prevent any faith at all from appearing in a government funded program—which assuredly is not what he has in mind.

This also just in from the new bipartisan Bush administration: HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson believes that the best way to prevent HIV infection is to find a cure for AIDS (Washington Post, 2/3/2001, A15). On the Christmas list for HHS: 1) a dictionary including the definition of “prevention;” 2) a press release about a magical new substance called “latex” which does prevent HIV transmission; and 3) a list of all of the sexually active teenagers who’ll be infected with HIV while the Bush administration putzes about looking for a cure, still years off.