I'm sorry, Robert, but this is the "dirty politics was invented by the Republicans" gag I've been getting on way too many other venues.

I'm willing to accept your statement that you weren't paying attention back then.

However, I'm not buying the idea that somehow the Democrats of 14 years ago, had they kept the House and Senate, and Al Gore had later won the presidency, would somehow have been paragons of bipartisan virtue, listening seriously to the concerns of conservatives and Republicans. Right.

Too many of the people in charge of the party now were in charge back then.

Canada was, for all intents and purposes, run by a single party for decades. We don't hear much about it from our pundits because it was the "right" party. Granted, it's not the same kind of government, but the ruling party is still the ruling party.

And, not to be repetitive, but nobody ever seemed to be bothered by the Democrats when they ran everything, and no Democrat ever stood up and said, "This is okay because at some point we'll let the Republicans back in again."

Do you honestly think that at ANY point in the past forty years, either the Democrats or Republicans set a goal of taking power on the assurance that they would willingly give it up after a certain amount of time to keep democracy pure?