Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois went onto an empty House floor on Friday and proclaimed, "We have made great progress in preparing America for the next century."
Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican seeking his party's presidential nomination, said recently, "We have a poisoned atmosphere in Washington that can only be cured by a new administration."
Early expectations that prosperity would allow this Congress to seize the moment and restructure the Medicare and Social Security programs to prepare for the coming retirement of the baby boom generation evaporated quickly. President Clinton's proposal for a new Medicare prescription drug benefit languished. The horrific shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado could not propel gun control legislation through Congress.
The Republican majority built little public support for its 10-year, $792 billion tax cut and did not try to override Clinton's veto of the measure. And the Senate's rejection of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty ended any last pretense of bipartisanship on foreign policy.
The pre-eminent accomplishment of the year was legislation repealing Depression-era laws that had limited the ability of banks, securities firms and insurance companies from entering into one another's businesses. The bill passed because of enormous and unified lobbying from some of the most powerful business interests in America and because most of the issues were not partisan.
The partisanship that roils the Congress on other issues has several causes. Tensions from impeachment still flare. The coming election has also put both parties on a war footing.
Each party in the House accuses the other of trying to destroy any possibility of compromise. Representative Dick Armey of Texas, the House majority leader, said in an interview that House Democrats were trying to wrest back control of the House in the 2000 election by dedicating themselves to "stopping everything we can at every point" so that they can run against a "do nothing" Congress. "They disclaim partisanship," Mr. Armey said, "as if they're perfectly innocent."
For his part, Representative Richard A. Gephardt, the House minority leader, said, "The answer to that is, 'Rubbish.' " Gephardt, a Missouri Democrat who decided against a presidential run this year so he could focus on the battle for the House, ticked off a list of Democratic priorities, from overhaul of the campaign finance law to regulation of health maintenance organizations to gun control. He then accused the Republicans of intransigence.
"I would do all those things," Gephardt said. "They just don't want to do it." Pointing to polls showing that all these measures have wide support, he said, "They're frustrating the agenda that the American people really want."
"You know even at the worst moments Nixon wasn't partisan," Lott said.
"In fact, many Republicans thought he wasn't partisan enough."
And when the Senate killed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty this fall, Senator Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina, startled the chamber by reciting an imaginary conversation between Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain and Clinton about the treaty. It ended with Blair saying, "Give my regards to Monica." The reference to Monica S. Lewinsky was later struck from the Congressional Record.
On another issue, the Senate passed an increase in the minimum wage, an issue that has been a Democratic priority, but linked it to new tax breaks the administration opposed.
"This administration, the Democrats, if they had their way, they would have spent more, raised taxes and increased regulations across the board," Lott said.
Republicans, trying to hold together their coalition of conservatives and moderates, put forward an extremely modest agenda of their own, one that would not showcase their divisions. No longer were they acting like the revolutionaries who wanted to transform Washington.
At the beginning of the year, Republicans said they wanted to provide for national security, retirement security, education and tax cuts.
So they took credit for increasing military pay and Pentagon spending, for granting more flexibility in how federal education money can be used, and for requiring the administration to deploy a missile defense when it becomes technologically feasible. They also said they had created a new political firewall against using Social Security money to pay for other government programs.
"This is compassionate conservatism," Hastert said on the House floor, linking Congress to the presumed Republican front-runner for president, Gov. George W. Bush of Texas.
In many ways, the Republican emphasis on education and protecting Social Security is also a response to the Democrats, who have used those issues in their campaigns. "These are issues that traditionally have been Democratic issues," said Representative Christopher Shays, Republican of Connecticut. "We're learning how to deal with them. It will take time."
But the Republicans' signature issue was the tax cut. And they refused even to enter negotiations over it once Clinton vetoed the $792 billion measure, unwilling to get into a negotiation that would force them to agree to new programs in exchange for a smaller tax cut. Instead they hoped for the election of a Republican president in 2000 who would sign such a bill.
"Republicans are saying let's wait until the election," said Senator Frank H. Murkowski, Republican of Alaska. "Then we'll do better."
Both parties pledged to return to the unfinished agenda next year, and some Republicans held out hope that Clinton would want to work with them for a final burst of accomplishments in his last year in office. But Lott acknowledged that making fundamental changes in either the Social Security or Medicare programs would be even more difficult in the election year.
"I think that the likelihood of doing those kinds of things in 2000 are not very likely," he said. "I think they will be done in 2001 because they need to be done."