By Gene Lyons

Somebody’s going to have to teach the Republican leadership that bipartisan isn’t a synonym for weak. That somebody may have to be Barack Obama. The success of his presidency may depend upon it. No professorial lectures, please. It’s not possible to reason with people peddling grotesque and preposterous lies, bargain with people who are screaming, or negotiate under threats of violence.

It’s not a professional wrestling exhibition, it’s our democracy. Persons whose behavior would get them thrown out of a Rolling Stones show should be removed by security. Period. President Bush, it will be recalled, almost never appeared before audiences not pre-screened for loyalty. Potential dissenters were prevented from entering, and sometimes arrested.

Democrats shouldn’t act that way. At his recent “Town Hall” in New Hampshire, Obama calmed the crazies by simply asking questioners to identify themselves. Also, even Sarah Palin’s most rapt supporters may have understood that shouting down the president would likely backfire politically.

More broadly, however, Democrats appear once again to have been surprised by the near-hysteria of the GOP’s lunatic fringe. It’s been building for a generation. Early in Bill Clinton’s first term, evangelist Jerry Falwell devoted his TV show to peddling “The Clinton Chronicles,” a crackpot video alleging that the president of the United States was a drug smuggler who had political enemies whacked.