[Python] python string to date ISO 8601

I am converting many obscure date formats from an old system. The dates are unpacked/processed as strings and converted into ISO 8601 format.

This particular function attempts to convert YYMMDD0F to YYYYMMDD -- function name says it all. Dates from the year 2000 make this messy and clearly this is not the most pythonic way of handling them. How can I make this better using the dateutil.parser?

def YYMMDD0FtoYYYYMMDD(date):
YY = date[0:2]
MM = date[2:4]
DD = date[4:6]
if int(YY) >= 78:
YYYY = '19%s' % YY
elif 0 <= int(YY) <= 77 and MM!='' and MM!='00':
YYYY = '20%s' % YY
else:
YYYY = '00%s' % YY
return "%s-%s-%s" % (YYYY, MM, DD)

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