Before people started counting votes on November 7, the 2000 electoral contests seemed to add up to a model modern election. Frontrunners who had vanquished potentially strong opponents early in the nomination phase, Governor George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore were experienced candidates who clearly spoke for majorities within their respective parties. According to surveys, voters thought that the major candidates were well qualified, that their campaigns had been well run, and that citizens had enough information to make up their minds. At the same time, voters thought it made little difference whether Bush or Gore emerged the winner - no doubt a leading reason for the public's patience during the five-week ordeal over the Florida balloting.

As for the congressional elections, the parties were unusually well matched. Neither party, to be sure, ventured much beyond their prime targets of opportunity: open or marginal seats. In the home stretch, only about two dozen House races remained truly competitive. Within that narrow playing field, however, Republicans and Democrats - and their interest-group allies - competed fiercely. For once Democrats' campaigns were well-oiled and well-financed. House Democratic Campaign Chair Patrick Kennedy (R. I.) raised record amounts of money (though still short of the Republicans' totals). Party leaders succeeded in recruiting a number of "quality candidates" to enter the political arena and at the same time coaxed senior members into deferring retirement in the hope of reaping the rewards of majority status: committee chairmanships.

The best analogy to the present state of affairs occurred more than a century ago: roughly speaking, the years that came to be known as the "Gilded Age." Between the collapse of Reconstruction in 1876 and the Republican landslide twenty years later, Senate majority-party control changed hands no less than seven times; the House witnessed five party turnovers. Major-party seat margins were tiny during these years: 5.5 seats on average in the Senate (including an even split in 1881-1883) and 23.5 seats in the House.

The Congress of that period, as described by Woodrow Wilson, was all-powerful but failed to provide leadership for the nation. Whereas it hoarded power and diligently made policy on all manner of subjects, Congress had utterly failed to clarify great public issues and engage the public in its debates: "the instruction and guidance in political affairs which the people might receive from a body which kept all national concerns suffused in a broad daylight of discussion." Rather than crisp partisanship in floor debates that could illuminate Congress's work, legislation was crafted within the often-inaccessible committee rooms, which Wilson called the "dim dungeons of silence." Rather than grappling with the great issues of state, Congress was a marketplace for the particularized benefits that marked an era described as "the great barbecue" - pensions, government contracts, land deals, patronage, and the like. Little wonder, then, that the public seemed so estranged from the bewildering mechanics of lawmaking.

Capitol Hill was often a chaotic place during the Gilded Age. Centrifugal forces dominated; the two parties battled in stalemate and alternated in power. Legislative outputs were small and relatively insignificant. Congress was the object of ridicule; newspapers and reformers clamored for changes in the system.

Out of this stalemate there eventually emerged a vigorous party leadership. It was not until the early 1890s that Republicans regained solid control of the House and, after 1896, the Senate as well. One precondition was the advent of a more or less stable partisan majority. Other forces for central leadership were structural: the growing size of the institution and the impact of careerism on Capitol Hill. This enabled the GOP to consolidate its leadership in both chambers. Their control remained intact until 1910, when internal dissention and then midterm electoral defeat destroyed their hegemony, and 1912, when party divisions cost the party the White House as well as Congress.

Today the Republican and Democratic parties organize Congress and dominate its proceedings more completely than at any time in the last century. In the country at large, voters profess to dislike both parties and their quarrelsome ways. (One is entitled to be skeptical of citizens' antipathy toward the parties: at least among the voting public, nine out of ten professed partisans do in fact vote for their own party's presidential and congressional candidates.) Nor is the public animated by the endless maneuvering that takes place between and within the parties.

The major difference between the Gilded Age and our own is the locus of political party strength. Wilson's "government by the standing committees of Congress" flowed from the absence of coherent party leadership and organization. "Outside of Congress," Wilson wrote, "the organization of the national parties is exceedlingly well-defined and tangible. . . . but within Congress it is obscure and intangible."

Partisanship is today very much alive on Capitol Hill, whatever may be the state of party organization at the grassroots level. The four congressional parties see to it that policy platforms are constructed, agendas negotiated, campaign funds raised and dispersed, nonincumbent challengers encouraged and tutored, floor leaders chose, committee assignments made, floor debates scheduled, and votes rounded up. The range of party functions, and their attendant organizational apparatus, dwarfs all previous partisan efforts. The current state of affairs thus stands Woodrow Wilson's observation on its head: congressional parties are robust whereas grassroots parties are all too often atrophied.

The virtual tie in voter support for the winners in all three policymaking institutions - the presidency, House, and Senate - would seem to preclude major policy breakthroughs. President Bush will initially be forced to present a limited legislative agenda. The president will have scant leverage with members of Congress, few if any of whom owe their election to presidential intervention. White House and congressional leaders will have to search for cross-party alliances to process even a limited agenda.

The 2000 elections found the nation faced few threatening issues: with a world at peace and a prosperous economy, there were few deep-seated issues in the election. But no one should expect those benign conditions to continue indefinitely. Changing economic or world problems are certain to upset the present equilibrium. The president and incumbent lawmakers will be judged on how they cope with such future crises.

The 107^th Congress will doubtless reflect the "permanent campaign" that is a hallmark of our contemporary national politics. Lacking working majorities in any of the branches of government, the parties are likely to strive to compile records geared to the next campaign cycle rather than negotiating with each other to achieve short-term results.