"NICE BUSH" SIGHTINGS, AS COMMON AS BIGFOOT SIGHTINGS

In The New York Times, Sheryl Gay Stolberg and David M. Herszenhorn claim they've spotted "nice Bush" again:

The selection of Mr. Mukasey -- a Washington outsider who met Mr. Bush for the first time during an hour-long interview at the White House on Sept. 1 -- seemed to signal that the administration is looking to move past the partisanship that characterized Mr. Gonzales's tenure.

Er, no -- it doesn't seem to signal that at all. It signals that Bush is a muleheaded, unyielding partisan right up to the (rare) moments when he knows he's can't beat the Democrats. Only then does he compromise.

Here's Stolberg and Herszenhorn's very next paragraph:

But two Democrats who will have a powerful say over whether Mr. Mukasey gets confirmed -- Senators Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont and Charles E. Schumer of New York -- vowed on Monday to use the nomination to extract information from a reluctant White House.

There you go. If Bush really were "looking to move past the partisanship," he wouldn't be "reluctant" to cooperate with Congress, would he?