If Wash. D.C. can't produce a solution to immigration, what hope is there on health care, energy independence, or Medicare and Social Security?

Dan Balz writes in The Washington Post:

The collapse of comprehensive immigration revision in the Senate last night represents a political defeat [and] a scathing indictment of the political culture of Washington.

The defeat of the legislation can be laid at the doorstep of opponents on the right and left, on congressional leaders who couldn't move their troops and on an increasingly weakened president and his White House team. But together it added up to another example of a polarized political system in which the center could not hold.

[T]hose far removed from the backrooms of Capitol Hill, what happened will fuel cynicism toward a political system that appears incapable of finding ways to resolve the nation's big challenges.

If Washington cannot produce a solution to the glaring problem of immigration, they will ask, what hope is there for progress on health care, energy independence, or the financial challenges facing Medicare and Social Security? Iraq is another matter entirely.

The collective failure of the two parties already appears to have stimulated interest in a third-party candidate for president in 2008 whose main promise would be to make Washington work.

"The reality is most people are just desperate to see a solution. If this goes down, the opposition is not offering an alternative, and that means the problem is still an issue," said Pete Brodnitz, a Democratic pollster. "We're in a period where people are looking to see leadership and progress."

Public opinion suggests an electorate open to, but by no means wildly enthusiastic about, comprehensive change that provides the 12 million illegal immigrants a path to citizenship, but only if there is an effective border security plan in place.