the story of a lame duck Congress that it was not

This is the story of a lame duck Congress that it was not.

Shaken by a historic election in which voters angry cancels the House Democratic control, lawmakers from both parties and President Barack Obama tried something new: They consulted each other. They cooperated. And finally, they pledged.

From tax cuts for a nuclear arms treaty and repeal the ban on openly serving gay troops, Congress and Obama White House closed its respective shops and headed out for the holidays with a little bag Common full of achievements.

The bipartisanship was one of them.

"This progress is ... a reflection of the message voters sent in November, a message that says it's time to find common ground on the challenges facing our country," Obama told reporters before joining his family in Hawaii. "It's a message that I take seriously in the new year, and I hope my Democrat and Republican friends do the same."

That's less likely that come January, when Republicans took control of the House, gain seats in the Senate and is guided in part by an astute leader of the Republican Party has declared that his priority is to deny the president a second term 2012.

But even he - Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky - have taken away a place for the first time at the negotiating table with the Obama administration. Technically, he negotiated with Vice President Joe Biden, friend of McConnell in the Senate for years, in a huge package of tax cuts, plus the extension of benefits for millions of unemployed workers.

Both parties hoped that the commitment would earn points for pragmatism with centrist and independent voters will be key in the 2012 elections.

In truth, the voters struggling a gift of 858 billion U.S. dollars of Christmas was a politician without complications. But the commitment to an agreement and produced a visual that would have been unimaginable just a few weeks earlier.