It's 100 days and counting for U.S. President George W. Bush. So far, so good. His approval ratings are better than those of most of his predecessors at this stage. He survived his first international crisis nicely, achieving the return of the American aircrew who ditched their EP-3 surveillance plane in China.

The president has been somewhat scarce in the media. He has been traveling a good bit, maintaining the kind of campaign schedule that his predecessor Bill Clinton began. It worked for Clinton, and it can probably work for Bush. The travel schedule means fewer national or network stories, and more high-impression local stories in the markets he visits. A study conducted by the Project for Excellence in Journalism reported over the weekend that there were 41 percent fewer stories about Bush on network TV during this period compared to Clinton's first 100 days. What the American people are seeing is a careful manager at work, not necessarily a political person wooing voters. Polls show that Bush is seen favorably by 63 percent of the American public, with just 32 percent rating him negatively. He gets positive marks for his handling of the economy (55 percent), international affairs (62 percent), tax cutting (54 percent) and education (60 percent). On environmental issues, he falls to 47 percent.

The partisan prism presents differing views of Bush. The Republicans are almost unanimous in their support of Bush, with 94 percent of them seeing him favorably. Democrats are more skeptical, with just 39 percent giving him passing marks.

Bush has not succeeded in making himself appear less partisan. His friendly outreach program to the Democrats has stalled and is beginning to backfire on him. Those in Congress he wooed most ardently now react with anger when his legislative proposals are strongly partisan and ideological. His efforts to close the division are not going well and the people know it. By a 54 to 35 percent margin, they believe he has not reduced partisanship in Washington. And they do not believe that he is compromising on important issues with Democrats the way he promised.

I am amazed at the political reaction to all of this. With very little competitive media coverage, the Democrats seem to be faring pretty well. The voters are prepared to trust the Democrats to do a better job of coping with the main problems that we face than the Republicans, by a 47-to-40 percent rating. In addition, support for the Democratic Party has jumped about 8 percentage points since the election.

The top surprise of the current round of polling is the rating for Congress. The Congress has a positive rating of 58 percent. That is truly astounding. For the past decade, it has rarely reached 30 percent. I have queried a number of friends in Congress and around it to try to ascertain what has happened. The only difference I can observe is that the 107th Congress has done absolutely nothing in the three months of its existence. People like a do-nothing Congress.

If Bush is less visible than his predecessors, where on earth is former Vice President Al Gore? Nobody has seen or heard of him since January, unless they took his class at Columbia. The pollsters say that is not all bad. A recent poll shows that 50 percent of the public views Gore favorably, 42 percent unfavorably. This is essentially unchanged since the election. Absence has not made the hearts grow less fond.

Washington has a spit of land south of the capital called Buzzard's Point. But I believe we need to have an elevated point, somewhere near the north side of the capital, to be officially named "Buzzard's Perch." Like the great birds of the prairies that spend their time waiting and watching for an animal to die, that same sort of activity consumes a lot of time in Washington these days on both sides of the political spectrum.

The Democrats are watching every move made by Sen. Strom Thurmond, the 98-year-old president of the U.S. Senate. He is the oldest senator in our history. He has had just enough hospital time in the past year to make Strom watchers palpitate -- but nothing serious, just some tired spells.

Thurmond is what makes the Senate 50-50. He is surviving to keep the balance of power in the Senate that gives the tie-breaking vote to Vice President Dick Cheney. His party needs him, and Thurmond is literally living up to the challenge. Should he expire or retire, a Democrat would fill his seat since the governor of South Carolina is a Democrat, and he would break the tie in the Democrats' favor. Strom is also up for re-election next year. In 1996, they re-elected him by a comfortable margin to what he said would be his last term. Some South Carolina politicians say that Thurmond could be re-elected even if he were dead.

On the other side of the aisle, trouble also lurks for the 50-50 club. One of the most aggressive and political of all of the 100 senators is being investigated on serious financial charges back home.

Sen. Robert Torricelli of New Jersey is in the spotlight, with prosecutors chasing down allegations that he has taken thousands of dollars worth of illegal gifts from a South Korean supporter who has already pleaded guilty to making illegal campaign contributions to his 1996 campaign. The Torch, as he is called, is maintaining his innocence. It is a long way from over. But the Buzzards from the Republican side are watching very closely. New Jersey has a Republican governor who would put another Republican in the Senate.

On Capitol Hill the campaign season never ends. With the Republican takeover of the White House, pollsters have been on the lookout for shifts in national party identification. But so far, there have been no major shifts in party trends. After the 2000 election, the Democrats held a lead of about eight percent in party preference. That number has changed very little since Bush became president.

One poll shows Democrats also have a slight lead for the '02 election for the House of Representatives. But the four-point lead is pretty meaningless this far ahead of the election. Congressional Democrats hold a decisive advantage when voters are asked which party they trust to protect the environment, improve health care and strengthen Social Security, but those margins are substantially smaller on virtually every issue area than they were eight years ago. Democrats have lost most of their advantage on which party is best at reducing the deficit and on "keeping America prosperous." They have completely lost the lead on which party is best "fighting crime and drugs" and on "cutting government waste."

The edge for the Democrats is explained by the gender gap. Women lean Democratic by 42 to 31 percent, with men tilting toward the GOP by a slight 39 to 36 percent. And it is the working women who make this difference. They favor Democratic candidates by 15 points, (45 to 30 percent), and housewives favor the GOP 49 to 26 percent.