When Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) delayed a vote on pay-equity legislation the day after the Pennsylvania primary so his party’s two presidential candidates could vote, Republicans accused him of forcing the chamber to dance to the presidential tune.

The GOP portrayed it as Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) saying, “Jump,” and the man running the august chamber asking, “How high?”

But this is hardly the only sign that all politics at this stage of the cycle is geared toward the November election.

Not a day goes past without the presidential contest in particular monopolizing attention; in 2008, at least as much as in any other year, winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.

Congressional Republicans are rallying behind Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and, despite the fact that he is not the candidate all or even most of them hoped for, are nevertheless trying to make sure they sing from the same hymn sheet. And the Bush administration has suddenly moved vigorously into campaigning mode, too.

On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates hinted strongly that the Pentagon supports a new GI Bill being crafted by McCain to reform veterans’ benefits. McCain decided to produce his own bill after veterans put him under pressure to support legislation authored by Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), who is mentioned as a possible vice presidential pick on the Democratic ticket.

McCain’s bill is neatly tailored to include items at the top of the Pentagon’s agenda. You could say Gates’s support was, then, a straightforward and principled decision to back the legislation nearest to his department’s hopes.

Nevertheless, there is mutual benefit in the alignment.

On the same day, Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt attacked the healthcare reform plans touted on the campaign trail by Obama and Clinton, saying they would push Medicare faster toward the fiscal cliff. Not coincidentally, Tuesday was also the day on which McCain unveiled his own healthcare platform.

None of this is very shocking or unusual, but still, it is instructive. Every fourth January, congressional leaders vault into the final 11 months of a presidential term vowing to get things done and to work hard legislating long into the summer.

And every four years, close political observers know it won’t work out that way. Sure, some legislating is unavoidable; a bill that comes to mind is the overhaul of foreign intelligence surveillance law that, left undone, would mean the automatic lapse of vital tools in the conflict against terrorism.

But it’s the exception that proves the rule. Congress and everyone else in the great federal city know the big prize is not this or that bill but the window offered by four — correction, three — whole years of a new presidency.