EVEN BEFORE THE first ballots were counted last night it was clear the national government would remain divided. Neither party had a chance to claim control of the White House and both houses of Congress - including a 60-vote majority in the Senate - which is what it takes to win approval of a partisan agenda.

The split persists because neither party has been able to decisively win the battle of ideas. In fact, neither party entered the fray this year with much of an issue arsenal. Republicans largely basked in President Bush's reflected popularity. Democrats trotted out the old Social Security bogeyman.

Maryland Democrats C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger of Baltimore County and Chris Van Hollen of Montgomery County claimed two Republican congressional seats to give their party a 6-2 edge in the state's House delegation. But those wins did not appear to portend a national shift off dead center.

Ideally, such an evenly balanced government would produce policies and programs reflecting a broad cross-section of views compromised in the center. But all too often in recent years there's no political will on either side to seek such an outcome.

The most glaring example of the current state of dysfunction is Congress' failure this year to fulfill its most fundamental responsibility: approving a budget. Only two of the 13 spending bills that finance the government were enacted before the lawmakers took their election recess. A lame-duck Congress is scheduled to return to Washington next week to finish the remainder, but its prospects of breaking an impasse with Mr. Bush are poor. A continuing stalemate means nearly all federal departments except Defense would operate perhaps until sometime next year at the same spending level they got last year.

From a purely penny-pinching point of view, that result is preferable to paying the ransom President Clinton used to demand to let the lawmakers leave town. By failing to update the spending bills, Congress has been unable to add the pork barrel items that make up an ever larger share of each lawmaker's work product. But this is a meat-cleaver approach to budgeting when a scalpel is what's required.

Without a clear demand from voters, there is little likelihood that Congress will take on the truly tough issues, such as preparing Social Security and Medicare for the onslaught of the baby boomers. Such leadership would have to come from Mr. Bush, but he may not be inclined to the task, either, between waging war on Iraq and setting out on his own re-election campaign.

For the newcomers elected yesterday, the challenge will be to rise above the snarl and deliver more than the status quo. At a minimum, they might urge their new colleagues that it would be refreshing if they took a pause between election campaigns to try to get something productive done.