LIKE Rome before its sacking, Washington is not entirely sure what to expect when the newly elected Republican-controlled House of Representatives settles down to work in the nation's capital on January 5th. But it does know, in a general sort of way, that a certain amount of unpleasantness lies ahead.

To judge by what they say, the incoming Republicans see themselves less as Goths than as cleansers of the Augean stables. Before November's elections they portrayed “Washington”—a constellation embracing the president, the federal government and the pork-ladling, tax-raising, freedom-crushing Congress—as a monster that trampled on the people's rights, smothered enterprise with pointless regulation and pauperised future generations by spending money it did not have. They are promising to cut it down to size—and fast.

They do, however, face a small difficulty. For the fact is that they have not actually won control of Washington. They will control the House with a handsome majority of 242 to 193. But the Democrats will continue to have a majority, albeit a diminished one, in the Senate; and Barack Obama has at least two more years as president. Moreover, the Democrats showed during the lame-duck session in November and December that in spite of their mid-term chastisement they still have some fight left in them. Indeed, the 111th Congress ended in an unexpected parade of successes for Mr Obama, who after a cheerful, self-congratulatory press conference departed for an end-of-year holiday in Hawaii with an unmistakable swagger in his step.

What rescued Mr Obama from the tetchy despond he fell into immediately after the mid-terms? First came his Houdini-like escape from the trap he faced as George Bush's “temporary” tax reductions were due to expire. Forced to extend them for the rich as well as the poor, he was able to do so as part of a deal that included a big new dose of stimulus spending the Republicans had long opposed, thereby turning defeat into what could be presented as victory. And though for want of a supermajority in the Senate the Democrats failed to pass the DREAM bill, which would have given the children of illegal immigrants a path to citizenship, they notched up other successes. Two notable ones were the repeal of the ban on homosexuals serving openly in the armed forces, and ratification of the New START arms-reduction treaty with Russia.

The incoming Republicans can tell themselves that these were just the parting shots of a Congress that is now defunct and that everything in the 112th Congress will be different. The Republicans in the new House are a more conservative bunch than in the old one. Some 55 of the 63 new ones signed the Contract from America, a stables-cleansing manifesto that calls for repealing health-care reform, adding a balanced-budget amendment to the constitution, capping federal spending and writing a new tax code no longer than the 4,543 words of the original constitution. A record 127 House Republicans have joined the Republican Study Committee, a hard-core conservative group whose chairman, Tom Price of Georgia, promises that the new House will lay on “a master-course in liberty and freedom” as it blocks the “terrible, terrible” things the Democrats got up to during the 111th.

The Democrats had indeed better forget about passing controversial legislation in the coming two years. At most they can try to advance their policies by using the president's power to lay down regulations and manage federal agencies. “The ability of President Obama to accomplish important change through these powers should not be underestimated,” says John Podesta, president of the left-leaning Centre for American Progress. Thus the Environmental Protection Agency intends to order power plants and refineries to cut greenhouse-gas emissions, a move the Republicans denounce as a “back-door” attempt to impose cap-and-trade. But at the same time the Democrats will face a formidable counter-offensive mounted from the new House.

Like the Democrats, the Republicans will not be able to advance many of their aims by legislation. If they try to repeal Obamacare, for example, the president will simply veto their bill. But they have plenty of other weapons to hand. Control of the House gives them power over money and a duty to oversee the executive branch. Darrell Issa, the new chairman of the oversight committee, hopes to close whole chunks of the federal government in the name of savings and efficiency. Fred Upton, the new chairman of the energy and commerce committee, promises to be “relentless” in his oversight duties. And the House Republicans can always pass bills that they know will fail in the Senate, or be vetoed by the president, simply to advertise where they stand and boost the chances of a Republican presidential victory in 2012.

Beauty pageant or ugliness contest?

For all that, the Democrats' successes in the lame-duck session do hold some lessons for the period of divided government that is about to begin. All those successes were in fact delivered by bipartisan majorities. The new Congress, too, cannot be purged of every trace of bipartisanship. If the Republicans subordinate everything to their goal of ousting Mr Obama in 2012, they risk striking voters as obstructionist zealots. In the next Congress, as in the last one, issues will sometimes arise on which each party has internal divisions and which call forth a bipartisan response.

Divided government may look ungainly, but it has its admirers. In theory, it can set up a sort of beauty contest, forcing the parties towards a golden mean in the centre of politics. The trouble is that it can also set up an ugliness contest, as irreconcilable ideologies bring the normal functions of government to a standstill. America's Chinese creditors, viewing the strange spectacle from afar, will no doubt conclude, as the old curse has it, that the United States is entering interesting times.





Economist.com/blogs/lexington