(Reuters) Lawmakers abandoned their high-profile effort to rein in the country’s ballooning debt on Monday in a sign that Washington likely will not be able to resolve a dispute over taxes and spending until 2013.

This whole procedure brings to question the bifurcated political system and the soundness of the whole enterprise.

Partisanship is said to diminish government by providing an opposing force for each side’s initiative. With an automatic argument against each side’s efforts, the notion is that all measures will be scrutinized and only the best will become law.

This is to forget the recourse of compromise. When two opposing parties are trying to get what they want, they might very well try to defeat each other and limit the other’s accomplishments. But, noting how limiting this is, the parties might well realize that the only way to get anything is to give the other side what they want. The result is two bad measures instead of one or none.

Here, the super committee realizes that they cannot compromise because they would look like fools if they proposed business as usual. And so we have gridlock, the other pillar of partisanship.