By the time Barack Obama's first term has expired, he'll either be as hammeringly partisan as Tom DeLay or as nonchalantly partisan as a pussycat. But one way or the other, this wistful business (or gossamer dream) about an authentic, mature and thoughtful bipartisanship with modern Republicans will be as doornail dead as Jacob Marley.

It all depends, of course, on the 2010 Congressional elections.

Republicans are banking on the fact, if not praying for it, that Obama's efforts to turn the economy around will have failed miserably by then -- and there they'll be, those hyperpartisan luminaries, propagandizing the desperate throngs that if they had been in charge our streets would be paved with nothing but economic upticks.

That's Scenario A, in which the GOP will either enlarge its Congressional minority status or even regain control. Either way it would shove Obama into an increasingly partisan -- and deafening -- arena.