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Party leaders on both sides, from the President to the Speaker, have come to terms over the past few years with the limits of their powers. Boehner has agreed to do the bidding of his most conservative members for now. The specter of a 2014 primary fight has sidelined Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, one of Washington's most seasoned dealmakers. His Democratic counterpart, Reid has egged on the GOP infighting and eschewed any negotiations. And Obama, the leader of the free world, has been wary of inserting himself too deeply in the whole sordid spectacle, though he shows up occasionally to lecture the legislators about responsibility.
In the meantime, each faction busies itself with the daily messaging war, an unending skirmish of e-mail blasts, tweets, viral videos and cable-news sound bites, making the eternal case that someone else is to blame. The nation has been carved up into echo chambers; increasingly, we hear only the sound of our own passions and fears reverberating. While Obama clearly had the initial advantage from the shutdown, according to polls, he is unlikely to escape all harm. The public has given up on waiting for the era of good feeling that he promised in his first campaign, and Obama's approval rating is now mired in the low 40s.
Voters will have to wait another year to decide at the voting booth who wins this unseemly and destructive combat. Republican pollster Whit Ayres is not alone in his fear that the stiff-necked purity of the safe-seat conservatives will cost the party its House majority. "It's frustrating not being able to have much effect on Obamacare," he warns. "It would be even more frustrating to watch Nancy Pelosi wield the Speaker's gavel again."
Which she could certainly do in 2015 should her health and ambition hold up, because her own re-election is a foregone conclusion. She has a safe seat in San Francisco, where she frequently wins 80% of the vote no matter what befalls the rest of the country.
--With reporting by Zeke Miller/Washington And Alex Rogers/Washington