Here's some free advice for President-elect Bush, adapted from an editorial in the upcoming issue of The New Democrat:

Token bipartisanship -- finding one or two members of the opposition who will accept a Cabinet post or support a legislative initiative -- is standard operating procedure in every presidential administration. This is not the time for standard operating procedure. The country cannot be healed, a working legislative majority cannot be built, and the big challenges facing America cannot be met with hollow bipartisanship that leaves most members of the opposition out in the cold. Real bipartisanship requires a willingness to share credit with the other party. It requires visible and explicit movement toward the opposition's policy views and priorities. Perhaps most importantly, it often means disappointing and perhaps even repudiating the most passionate ideologues in one's own party.

In other words, real bipartisanship means building coalitions from the "center-out," rather than from the "outside-in." The best indicator of a successful center-out coalition is that it is opposed by the hard right and the hard left simultaneously.

George W. Bush has said plenty since Election Day about the kind of presidency he would pursue. And most of his words indicate an interest in token, not real, bipartisanship.

Even before Al Gore conceded the election, Bush's pseudo-transition team spent a great deal of time lofting trial balloons about moderate-to-conservative Democrats who might be talked into serving in Bush's Cabinet. So far none of them has agreed to sign on. As for his policy agenda, Bush and his operatives have shown no willingness to move beyond the Bush campaign platform. GOP speculation about bipartisanship in Congress has been limited to efforts to pick off a handful of "Blue Dog" Democrats in the House to support the standard Republican agenda.

Most surprisingly, both Bush and his running mate, Dick Cheney, went out of their way in early December to suggest that their top priority might be passage of the huge, across-the-board tax cut that represented the most controversial proposal of their campaign. Since the number of congressional Democrats supporting this proposal can be counted on one hand, this announcement was a serious step backwards for any prospects of real bipartisanship under a Bush administration.

Moreover, Bush has yet to utter a discouraging word to DeLay and other conservative ideologues to temper their hopes of consolidating the failed Republican Revolution of 1994.

The best template available for real bipartisanship in the years ahead was provided by the outgoing Clinton-Gore administration, which repeatedly put together center-out coalitions in the most difficult circumstances hitherto thought possible. The NAFTA, GATT, and China trade-relations agreements, the welfare reform bill, the balanced budget agreement, the Kassebaum-Kennedy health insurance legislation, the telecommunications and banking reform acts, and an array of less momentous accomplishments all met the criteria for real bipartisanship outlined above: sharing credit, moving towards the opposition, and repudiating the extremes.

If the Bush administration is willing, and leaders of both parties respond, raw material is available to build real bipartisanship through center-out coalitions. In the Senate, where 60 votes are necessary to enact controversial legislation, the centrist New Democrat Coalition may grow to as many as 20 members in the next Congress. The small-but-hardy ranks of Republican moderates may well be augmented by supporters of Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who have been strongly arguing for real bipartisanship since Election Day. And even in the more partisan House, the New Democrat Coalition is the largest formal bloc in the Democratic Caucus, with more than 70 members likely to join by January. There is probably a similar number of House Republicans worried about survival in 2002 and chafing under the partisan whip of DeLay.

In the wake of the electoral tie of 2000, at a time when the two parties are dead-even in support at every level of American politics, there is a way up and out. It will require forgiveness from the loser of the presidential election, humility from the winner, an understanding that the American people want bipartisan accomplishment, and a commitment to the real bipartisanship that can make it possible.

The first step towards governing at dead even is up to the new Bush administration. The options are clear, and the judgment of history awaits.