IN THIS NEWSPAPER’S endorsement of Inez Tenenbaum for the U.S. Senate, we made a great fuss over her independent viewpoint and her ability to work with both political sides. But this is essentially a two-party system, and to vote is to pick one side or the other, isn’t it? What’s the big deal about being independent?

One good answer to that: Look at where South Carolina will send the winner of this race. The nation’s capital is suffering a plague — not of frogs, Republicans or Democrats, but of partisans. If the system does not work in Washington, the main logjam is ideological head-butting that continues until both sides are exhausted and nothing gets done.

Look first at the U.S. House.

The House, where Jim DeMint has served for six years, is the more partisan of the two bodies of Congress. In fact, it’s a case study in a failure to get things done in a bipartisan manner, despite the narrow size of the Republican majority. Almost all legislation passes by party-line vote, often with debate truncated by the majority. The Democratic minority cannot even get its legislation to a floor vote; most gets blocked by the Rules Committee.

The rules get more flexible when the majority wishes. When the Medicare prescription drug bill was shoved through the House, the voting was held open all night while wrists were twisted.

Despite the total GOP control of the agenda, Republicans have tried to use their power to expand their advantage. House Majority Leader Dick Armey masterminded the push to do a second redistricting in Texas to run several House Democrats out of their districts. This breached one of the few remaining traditions of decorum in U.S. politics. If this breach becomes the new standard, the fights over redistricting that used to come every 10 years will become commonplace bloodletting.

The Republicans are in power now, but once things reverse, the nasty tone likely will continue. Democrats, when they are restored to power, are apt to use the same rules to exact vengeance after years in the minority. A new, lower standard of bipartisanship is becoming the norm.

Now take the Senate, the focus of this election. It has a more collegial tradition than the House, and the rules and size of just 100 allow for much more thorough debate. But after the presidential race, the biggest issue in national politics this year has been who would control the new Senate. Having 51 votes to pick the majority leader gives a party great influence over what legislation will get to the floor.

But 51 votes won’t pass a lot of contentious legislation, in a body that protects the filibuster the way the U.S. Senate does. Whichever side wins the majority, it will need some cooperation, at least, from the other side. That hasn’t been the standard recently.

How the Senate handles nominations is the flagrant example. Judicial nominations spur the loud public battles, but the confirmation of nominees to run the government also has slowed to a crawl, a situation that gets worse every four years. Each side says that the problem will be solved if it can win a few more elections. But adding more folks with entrenched, partisan views on either side isn’t the way to solve this.

All this infighting on Capitol Hill reinforces one of this editorial board’s key values: supporting those who work thoughtfully with those on the other side rather than getting locked into partisan standoffs.

Rep. DeMint’s career could lead me to think he would be that senator. In fact, he pursued Democratic support for his plan to revamp Social Security, and he refused to change his position on the Medicare prescription drug entitlement when the vote was kept open all night long for wrist-twisting. “I don’t think anyone can say that I walk in lockstep with the leadership,” he said.

But again and again, he has insisted during this campaign that he would not be that independent vote. He has beaten the loyalty drum, to party and president, loudly enough for all to hear. And I hear him.

Mrs. Tenenbaum’s intellectual independence and ability to work with those not in her party have not been adopted for the purposes of this campaign. She has a record of resisting pressure from her own party leaders and striving to work with Republicans in Columbia. And she has, in this campaign, told South Carolina she will be that independent voice, even disagreeing with her party’s nominee on such a crucial issue as Iraq.

Wanting to go up to the Senate and make up her own mind is not just a value of Inez Tenenbaum’s; it’s how the Congress is supposed to work. It’s designed to be a counterbalance to the power of the presidency. The Founding Fathers imagined that the Senate especially would be a place of free and deep thought, where ideas submitted by the chief executive or the more passionate people’s body, the House, would be sifted through and refined or even rejected.

This Congress hardly deserves praise for how it has done its job: look at its record on spending, to take just one example. It has not acted as a counterbalance to the executive branch.

The next Congress really will require two-party cooperation to function better. That never will happen unless the states send to Washington people who pledge to make it work in the manner that it is supposed to — no matter who wins the White House.

Reach Mr. Fitts at (803) 771-8467 or at mfitts@thestate.com.