THE SADDEST WORDS OF TONGUE OR PEN: Yesterday's bipartisan Senate love fest for incoming Fed Chair Ben Bernanke may not have made for scintillating TV, but it did give America something worth viewing: a glimpse of what George W. Bush's presidency could have looked like had he actually been a uniter and not a divider.

Let's be honest. All President Bush had to do after 9/11 was dial down the ideology a bit, and replace the Mayberry Machiavellis in his White House with a team that folks on both sides of the aisle could respect. That was it. Game over. The GOP would have been happily running the country for the next fifty years. Instead, he chose the one sure path of folly for himself and the country: amping up the partisan rancor by aggressively pursuing a right-wing agenda, and further empowering all the worst elements of his administration and his party -- the frauds, the mountebanks, the haters, the lifelong second-raters.

And so here we are today, divided at home, isolated abroad, and filled with a brown-spots-on-our-underwear sense that the future could be a grim place, indeed.

It didn't have to be this way. And maybe -- just maybe -- it still doesn't. There's still time for this president to throw out the rascals and get a fresh start with the American people.

Needless to say, given the record, I don't expect him to do anything of the kind. But I sincerely hope he does. At this point in our national history, with any number of tough challenges facing us both at home and abroad, America simply can't afford its first failed presidency of the 21st century.