As Barack Obama huddled with Senate Democrats in the walnut-paneled Mansfield Room in the Capitol this month, the man he beat for the presidency held court at a bank of television cameras outside to taunt his former foe.

“A year ago, the president of the United States ... [said] that when we get into health care reform, there will be Republicans in the room, Democrats in the room ... C-SPAN cameras,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) told the clutch of journalists, reveling in the notion of catching Obama in the act of retreating on his promise.

Story Continued Below

McCain even directed the C-SPAN cameraman to “go right over to the meeting there because that was the commitment made.”

After nearly a year, this is what’s become of the health care debate: Democrats hunkered behind closed doors on a bill struggling to gain public support, Republicans lobbing one partisan grenade after the next. 

In the wake of this grinding fight, Obama’s campaign pledge now seems hollow, either hopelessly naïve or deeply cynical. Far from being a show of bipartisan goodwill, the health care debate has proved to be just the opposite, with the most polarized, party-line votes on a sweeping social-reform bill in the modern era. No Republicans voted for the Senate bill Thursday. A single one backed the House version last month.

In the end, the political stakes proved to be too high — and the philosophical differences too great — for Obama to live up to his lofty rhetoric. In the face of steadfast GOP resistance to his plan, the president retreated from his gauzy campaign vision, eventually abandoning any notion that he’d undertake the sort of shirtsleeve cajoling and compromise he’d need to get Republicans on board. 

Finally, Obama simply didn't need the Republicans - or C-Span cameras - to remake the health care system. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) were able to corral enough Democrats to make them irrelevant. So the trio passed health care without them - betting the advantage gained from a political victory now would more than blot out any damage from abandoning Obama's old applause line.

Republican leaders, in turn, put an increasingly high value on blocking any hope of compromise — so much so that they never truly offered a comprehensive alternative plan until the very end. Digging in could rouse their dispirited base by defeating the liberal president on his signature issue, with the built-in rallying cry of facing down a “big government” health plan that defied conservative principles.

Fighting health care was a chance at rejuvenating the party, whose leaders were confident the country was as alarmed by Obama’s activist tendencies as they were, and comforted by polls that suggested that was the case.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told POLITICO that he embarked on a “very systematic and persistent” campaign since Memorial Day to undermine support for the president’s reform push, arguing that it would raise taxes, hike premiums and erduce Medicare. McConnell delivered more than 83 speeches on the Senate floor against reform.

And as Obama and the Republicans lapsed into these depressingly familiar roles, a political class that relies on these fights for its survival sprang into place to enable them. Advocates left and right amplified the talking points. Fundraisers breathlessly piggybacked on the cause. Twenty-four hour cable TV and websites cast a storyline in terms of the raw politics — who’s up and who’s down.

In the end, it’s not surprising that Obama and the Republicans couldn’t rise above decades of partisanship.

It’s more surprising that anyone harbored the notion they might.

"The bipartisanship that went on for 30 years was abnormal, and what you're seeing now is more normal," said former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt, a Democrat from Missouri. "You've got to always remember that politics is a substitute for violence. ... If I disagree with you, it becomes very easy to not like you."

"Both parties have come to the view that to win elections, you need to deprive the other side of legislative victories,” Gephardt said. “If that's your political strategy, then that's your legislative strategy."