Forgive the cynicism, Mr. President, but if you were serious about cooperating and consulting with the new Congress, you wouldn’t be parading your bipartisan bona fides through the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal.

You wouldn’t be holding news conferences in the Rose Garden telling the world how ready, willing and able you are – we know you are not eager – to work with the Democratic Congress.

You would instead be meeting privately with Democratic leaders, identifying specific areas where progress can be made and joining with them to come up with a legislative agenda that is truly bipartisan.

To many of us, your post-November conversion to bipartisanship appears to be nothing but spin – at least so far. You misunderestimate our capacity to remember the way you treated the Democrats when your party ran Congress. We will not soon forget your “my way or the highway” approach. You will forgive us if we pay more attention to what you do than to what you say.

Forgive the early criticism, Speaker Pelosi, but if you were serious about introducing and fostering a new atmosphere of bipartisanship in Washington, you might have waited a decent interval before shoving legislation down the throats of the minority party. You might have been more willing to give Republicans warning about what they would be voting on, and you might even have been willing to consult with them about the substance of those bills.

Much of the country agreed with the Democrats’ criticism of the highhanded way the Republicans ran the House, and much of the country voted for Democratic candidates in the hope that Democrats would make the legislative process fair and transparent.

Your plan to force members to vote with no opportunity to offer amendments is inconsistent with what Democrats said they would do and what American voters hoped they would do. This is a blindness that will come back to haunt you.

Forgive the gratuitous commentary about presidential politics, but couldn’t the candidates do away with exploratory committees and reinstate the old-fashioned announcement? Couldn’t they wait a while longer before taking the plunge? It is only five days into 2007, and 2008 seems to be upon us already – at least in the eyes of the potential candidates.

When someone leaks a secret memo showing that private citizen Giuliani is worried about possible scandal in his personal history, and when former Massachusetts governor Romney changes his position on same-sex unions so dramatically, you don’t have to be a weathervane to know which way the wind is blowing.

And if Sen. Clinton were truly unhappy about being forced to make an early decision on whether to be a serious senator or a serious presidential candidate, she’d take the easy way out of her dilemma: She could just tell the world that she won’t make a decision until June or July – and then live with it. No wringing of hands or whining required.

Forgive the cold water on an otherwise impressive event, candidate Edwards, but why couldn’t you have simply announced your candidacy? Your announcement from New Orleans looked like a partisan gimmick, taking advantage of human misery to take a shot at the Republicans. Your genuine concern about the problem of poverty in America is well known. Shouldn’t that issue be used to unite Americans, not to divide them?

Forgive me for being hard-boiled, but from my perspective inside the Beltway, it looks like 2007 is business as usual.