It felt different being in Washington the week of Barack Obama's inauguration. Certainly, having a couple of million people drop by for the occasion had something to do with it. Mammoth crowds do tend to change the mood of a place, especially when they are drawn there by a shared sense of history in the making.

The new president says he wants to harness that sense of shared endeavor. He wants to enlist that spirit of national purpose to address the country's problems. He begs for bipartisanship in the politics of the capital.

But does such a thing exist?

In Washington, in reality, bipartisanship usually reduces to this: You are welcome to cross the aisle to vote for the other guy's program. But do not try to devise or revise that program, or even to alter it substantially. The other guy won the election, and your job is to fall in line or just vote no. An amendment here, an appointment there, and thank your lucky stars for that.

Anyone can find a few examples of the parties acting in concert, always with a great show of self-congratulation. But there is a reason these examples stand out. And on closer inspection, they usually turn out to be driven by fear.

Take the most recent instance, the passage of the financial bailout known as TARP last autumn. Democrats might have gladly let the Bush administration take the fall for a few investment bank failures, but the Treasury and the Fed convinced them the entire banking system was on the brink of collapse.

That prospect was too scary, so they went along. Some held back, of course, but the leadership of both parties (including the presidential nominees) carried the day.

Before that, we saw Democrats and Republicans join hands in the fall of 2002 to approve the use of force against Iraq (which became the invasion of March 2003). Again, a substantial rear guard voted no, including a bare majority of Democrats in the House. But the big-name Democrats in both chambers -- including Sens. Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden -- voted yes.

Surely, some did so fearing the prospect of Saddam Hussein armed with weapons of mass destruction. There was also the prospect of elections that autumn, with the shadow of Sept. 11 unavenged still hanging overhead.

Either way, fear prevailed.

Go back to the legendary tax cuts enacted by Ronald Reagan and a split-control Congress in 1981, and you will see an outright frenzy of bipartisan enthusiasm for lower revenues. The congressional Democrats of that day voted as though their political graves were gaping at their feet. Yet the post-game mood was celebratory, a festival of praise across Capitol Hill for this marvelous monument to bipartisanship.

In a sense, it does not matter whether bipartisan action springs from a sincere love of human harmony or an urge for self-preservation. The results look much the same either way. And surely this new president would welcome any motive that made the Republicans of 2009 make nice.

That is why he included Republicans in his Cabinet and a religious conservative in his inauguration ceremony. It is why he devoted roughly one-third of his economic stimulus package to tax cuts, the GOP prescription for most economic ills. It is also why he spent the second day of his first full week in office meeting behind closed doors with Republican members of the House and Senate -- and not with Democrats.

But in the end, all this amounts to little more than flowers and candy. If the GOP is to be won over to the Obama stimulus or to other aspects of cooperation on the economy, the case will not be made in Washington. It will be made on Wall Street, where stocks have been unable to sustain a rally. In the credit markets, where banks are still unwilling to resume normal lending. And on the unemployment line, which grows longer by the day.

On the first day of the first full week of the Obama era, major U.S. corporations announced layoffs of more than 50,000 workers. That is a number to instill fear. And fear is the one reliable path to bipartisanship.

Tonight, George W. Bush will look into the cameras and deliver the last prime-time address of his presidency. The broadcast TV networks have agreed to give him up to 15 minutes, which was all he asked for.

It's about the length of time he was allowed for a video chat with his party's national convention in St. Paul in September.

As the days dwindle down for the 43rd president, the TV networks were not eager to give up lucrative prime time. And the White House may have been just as glad to keep it short.

For all practical purposes, the Bush presidency has been over for months. The man remains the head of state and the chief executive, but he has not been the leader of the nation for some time.

His pronouncements, and the positions of his administration, have been of only marginal interest since sometime halfway through last year. In tacit recognition, the president has offered little beyond the routine communications from his office.

President Bush has had nearly nothing to say about the war in Gaza, the natural gas crisis in Europe or the historic terrorist attack in Mumbai. In the struggle to haul the financial system back from the brink of collapse, he has been all but invisible -- ceding his authority to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and hoping for the best.

This week, when asked whether he had asked Congress for the second $350 billion chunk of the bailout money for the financial industry, he said he hadn't done so because no one had asked him to. He wanted President-elect Obama to ask him to do it. Shortly after the news conference, the desired word came from the Obama camp, and President Bush issued the request. There you have it.

The speech is part of a protracted farewell tour the president has marched through, from his last round of Christmas parties to his final Cabinet meeting. The serial sayonara included his last White House news conference, where he admitted a few mistakes in the realm of imagery and message. He also used the words "disappointed" or "disappointment" a dozen times. But there was a distinct absence of significant regret.

Mr. Bush depicted his presidency largely as a succession of events that happened to him. Among these were the recessions that began and ended his tenure, the terrorist attacks of Sept.11, the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (the purported rationale for the U.S. invasion of that country), and Hurricane Katrina.

Given his apparent conviction that he could not be held responsible for any of these bad things, the president could stand tall and say he had a "good, strong record" to defend. But his claims of success have largely been reduced to a single negative achievement: the avoidance of another 9/11-style attack.

Both he and Vice President Cheney have repeatedly pressed this claim. They tell us that only the vigilance and aggressiveness of this White House has kept another Sept. 11 from happening, and that we would all agree -- if certain information could only be shared. We are all to understand, of course, that such information remains classified.

This week's duel with reporters was the first such interchange at the White House since July 2008. The ever-more-reclusive president stood aside last year for John McCain and his party to have a shot at winning in November.

In the campaign season, the Grand Old Party no longer wanted its good ol' boy president because he had come to symbolize so much that the electorate no longer wanted: open-ended commitments to foreign wars and a lack of commensurate interest in domestic needs. And that was before the problems of the banking industry dragged the entire economy into recession or worse.

With his early pinnacles of popularity far behind him, the president's personal aw-shucks charm had long since cloyed. Yet as the days have dwindled down, the president and vice president have striven to alter his image, sitting for exit interviews with various TV personalities. The tone has been wistful at times, combative at others.

When Jim Lehrer of PBS asked Mr. Cheney if it troubled him at all "to be leaving office next week with the overwhelming disapproval of a majority of the people as measured by the polls?" Mr. Cheney shot back: "I don't buy that." The vice president said he had just returned from a naval base where he had visited with a group of Navy SEALS who were quite supportive of the administration.

We can never foresee the final judgment of history on any question. It is always possible that future events will make the current administration look good in retrospect. But the odds are far greater that years hence we will reflect on this final display of Bush-Cheney assurance and certitude with disbelief, just as we do now.

In politics, as in normal life, bad behavior breeds more bad behavior. Errors force additional errors in response. It gets harder for anyone involved to rise above.

So it is with the fiasco of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, arrested Dec. 9 on corruption charges and headed for probable impeachment and criminal indictment in the weeks ahead.

No one comes out of this looking very good. Not the principals, the parties, the media or the blogging and twittering masses yearning to pile on.

Of late, the tendency in some quarters is to salute Blagojevich for what is variously called his defiance, moxie, chutzpah -- or even courage -- in appointing Roland Burris to succeed President-elect Barack Obama in the Senate.

Please. Do we really admire this?

Too shameless to step down or step aside, Blagojevich has kept the pot boiling to further his self-interest. Caught trying to profit from his appointment power, he still sees that power as an asset to be exploited. Maybe he imagines it's a bargaining chip toward the get-out-of-jail-free card he's looking for, or at the very least a chance to curry favor with potential jurors in Chicago.

All too willing to play ball with the embattled governor is Roland Burris. Thirty years ago, Burris was the first African-American elected statewide in Illinois history. But after terms as comptroller and attorney general a generation ago, he tried running for bigger jobs such as senator and governor and mayor of Chicago. He lost in the primaries every time and faded from public view. He is now 71, but still craving another achievement to carve in the space he has left open on his cemetery monument.

None of this would be happening if the Illinois Supreme Court had been willing to strip Blagojevich of the appointment power. Nor would it be happening if the Democrats in the Illinois Legislature had been willing to schedule a special election for the seat in 2009. Obviously, those Democrats thought it easier to have Obama's successor named by Blagojevich's successor, presumably Democratic Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn (especially because the strongest special election prospect looked to be Mark Kirk, a Republican congressman).

Through it all, we in the media have been more than willing to fan the flames. We are all too eager to elevate a sideshow such as this -- even as the economy tanks and Gaza burns. The existence of bigger, more serious stories may even make us hungrier for the distraction. This yarn has criminality, obscenity, overweening personal ambition and even those "racial overtones" we love to talk about with hushed voices. We can't help ourselves.

We've even taken to calling the governor "Blago," a nickname that smacks of fondness.

Back in December, when Blagojevich was arrested, Burris said the governor should resign and not fill the Obama vacancy in the Senate. Then the conversation moved on, other potential appointees were eliminated and Burris saw a chance for himself. Last week, he took it.

Since then, Burris has become a fixture on television, popping up more often than the GEICO gecko. He speaks of his appointment as "what the Lord has wrought" and flies to the Capitol to make a show of being turned away. He talks about all this as evidence of racial prejudice, as though the only objection anyone could have to a Blagojevich appointment would be the appointee's race.

But Burris' deportment is a model of decorum compared with some among his supporters. Democratic Rep. Bobby Rush, beginning his ninth term in the House, had to fight off a primary challenge from Obama back in 2000. Rush took the stage the day Burris was appointed and said no Democrat in the Senate would dare oppose a black appointee when the chamber had no current black members.

He has a point, of course. But he conveniently neglects to mention that just four years ago, when Obama was trying to become the only black member of the Senate, Rush endorsed a white candidate for the seat instead.

Obama and the Senate Democratic leaders have made their own mistakes. By stating flatly from the start they would not seat anyone Blagojevich appointed, they set themselves up for just the kind of bind they are in now. But they all believed a united front was the best way to force "Blago" to resign. They assumed he would be shamed into resigning. They misoverestimated him, as President Bush might have observed.

Should they have dropped their principled objection to a Blagojevich-tainted appointee when Burris' name came up? Perhaps. But had they done so, their shift would have been called political convenience -- and perhaps moral turpitude as well.

Damned if they do and damned if they don't. And for those whose main desire is to see Obama and the Democratic majority embarrassed, it is a gift that keeps on giving.