WASHINGTON — This could have been the start of a fruitful time in a capital barren of major policy accomplishments over the last few years.
President Barack Obama, his days in office waning, should be closing in on legacy items. Democrats and Republicans — locked in a cage match over control of the Senate — are motivated to help him end his term with the kind of bipartisan deals that often reflect a divided government, and help members on each side win re-election.
At the same time, Republicans should be light of heart, with prospect of winning the White House and their nemesis-in-chief heading to his final helicopter ride.
But these are not normal times.
Republicans, rather than rallying with joy around a nominee on the rise, settled into a bit of a hate dance this week with Donald J. Trump, in a bizarre bunny-hop of new endorsements, feeble thumbs up and continued denial and rage.
Distrust between Congress and Obama — at times involving even the president's party — and a Republican allergy to almost any increased federal spending have combined into a contentious brew that led this week to the unraveling of a basic appropriations bill, an unsettled fight over funding to combat the Zika virus and a dim horizon for once-promising items like an overhaul of criminal justice laws.
Other bills that departed committee on a wave of bipartisan bliss have been parked outside the House and Senate floors, and many judicial nominations are stalled.
Republicans say it is Obama's fault, accusing him of being too far from them on every policy issue, and using executive orders and regulations over legislative wooing to achieve his ends.
"This is my third president I've served with," Speaker Paul D. Ryan said on Thursday. "I'd say this is the most ideological president I've ever served with. He's very dogmatic in pursuit of his ideology, and therefore I don't see a bridging of the gap because of the nature of this presidency."
Democrats blame the far right of the Republican Party, which they say has dictated the terms of congressional action, and more often, inaction, for years. That in turn pushes Democrats further from compromise mode.
"The forces in our politics are pushing things to the extreme," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who stood with several of his colleagues on Thursday to deride Republicans over their own to-do list of legislation and confirmations left waiting. "The old forces that once brought things together are now pulling them apart. On both sides, but mostly on their side."
It has not always been this way. President Harry S. Truman's National Security Act of 1947 was forged with a Republican Congress before the brutal campaign of 1948. Ronald Reagan achieved major Social Security amendments and a rewrite of the tax code in 1986. Bill Clinton reached a landmark agreement with a Republican-led Congress to dismantle the New Deal-era federal welfare program in 1996, his re-election year.
"There was partisanship but always more possibilities for deals since factions in each party had incentives for working across the aisle," said Julian E. Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton. "That has changed."
He added, "The entire political process in the current age — especially with the 24-hour media — in my mind makes legislative negotiation almost impossible. Deals are reported before legislators even know about them, which gives activists and interest groups time to mobilize and kill them."
It may not help that the last end-of-a-term spark of bipartisanship, under George W. Bush during a financial crisis, produced the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, the Wall Street bank bailout that proved to be a political disaster and helped beget the Tea Party and the deepening partisan divide.
Some things are simply more complicated than they appear, or that partisan talking points capture.
For instance, Democrats this week twice filibustered a basic energy and water appropriations bill — one that was chosen because it seemed so easy to pass — because of an amendment, offered by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., that would bar the United States from purchasing water used in producing nuclear energy and nuclear weapons from Iran. Democrats argued that the amendment was a poison pill that would trigger a White House veto.
True. But they did not say that the reason it would have triggered that veto was that the bill most likely would have passed, with the help of Democrats wary of Iran.
Republicans say they will not offer an additional $1.9 billion to fight the Zika virus because the White House has not explained how it will spend the money; "explaining," though, is open to interpretation since the administration provided a lengthy memo on just that.
What Republicans are not saying is that they fully intend to release the money, just not as the appropriations process begins because they do not wish to further inflame spending issues with their colleagues in the House, who have their own internal struggles with passing a budget and appropriations measures.
The bright side is that even with a truncated legislative calendar, there is still time. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., sees a real chance for accord on a bill that would pave the way for medical advances and address Obama's desire to attack cancer. A version of the bill, the 21st Century Cures Act, has been passed by the House.
"I think it will be the most important bill we pass in Congress," Alexander said. "The president hopes to leave the architecture behind for advancements in precision medicine and his cancer moonshot, and so do we."
It helps that an $8.8 billion increase for the National Institutes of Health included in the package. Money that everyone can agree to spend tends to grease all legislative wheels, even in these times.