In centrist-speak, “bipartisan” has long been a term of praise regardless of what is actually being referred to. For some Democrats in particular, affixing the label to any bill is not only an inherently virtuous act but one that ordinary members of the public are bound to celebrate.

It’s a strange and perplexing assumption for several reasons, the most obvious of which is the idea that average voters are sufficiently tuned into the wheeling and dealing of elite brokerage politics to care about the finer points of the legislative process. In the abstract, there’s also nothing intrinsically good or bad about a piece of legislation being partisan or bipartisan: what ultimately matters is the content.

It’s for these reasons that the rationale currently being offered by the Biden administration around its infrastructure bill are so obviously wrongheaded and self-defeating. “In the White House there is a belief,” Politico reported last week, “that the public will reward the president for reaching a bipartisan agreement on infrastructure.”