WASHINGTON - Everything America hates about Congress was on vivid display these past few weeks as members struggled to pass the $700 billion financial rescue plan.

Yet experts argue that in the end the system worked, as members acted rapidly to try to ease what may be the most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression.

"Democracy is messy," explained Carl Pinkele, professor of politics and government at Ohio Wesleyan University.

But has it become too messy? How did a three-page Bush administration request balloon into a 450-page goodie bag brimming with tax breaks for NASCAR racetracks and children's wooden arrow makers, among others? Why did 58 House members who voted against the bill Monday vote yes Friday, after those sweeteners were added?

Congress clearly has an image problem, one that drove its already tiny approval rating down to 15 percent in a CBS News poll taken Sept. 27-30, in the midst of the bailout battle.

Will the bailout bill chaos prod the system to function more smoothly?

Probably not, said Jack Pitney, professor of American politics at Claremont McKenna College in California.

"This is how Congress usually works, and whenever people have the opportunity to watch it, they think less of the institution," he said.

Crafting legislation, especially a month before an election, is a delicate give-and-take process, one that requires doing what is necessary to win a House majority and 60 Senate votes, the number needed to stop a filibuster.

"You just have to keep giving things to people to get enough votes," explained Pinkele.

Still, the question lingers among constituents: Was this process uglier and seamier than usual?

Angry partisans

Yes, in one sense, because Congress in recent years has become more of a cauldron of partisan ire, where each side is highly suspicious of the other.

Veteran consensus-builders such as the two banking committee chairmen, Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., and Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., and friendly Republicans, including Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, were able to work smoothly behind closed doors.

But once their carefully crafted plans were offered to the rank-and-file Sunday, the partisan wrath surfaced. Republicans have long disliked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, saying she often shuts them out of decision-making, and Democrats -- many still stung by Bill Clinton's 1998 impeachment and the Bush White House's misleading claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq -- tend to view Republicans as ideologues unwilling to compromise.

Pelosi knew weeks ago that she needed 100 GOP votes for the bailout to pass. Too many urban and progressive Democrats could not back the bill; too many were concerned Wall Street fat cats were being saved while their constituents were being tossed out of their homes.

But when the partisan Pelosi emerged anew Monday, just before the House bailout vote, and blasted the "right-wing ideology of anything goes, no supervision, no discipline, no regulation," many GOP lawmakers were reminded of the speaker they despised.

Pelosi's speech "was hardly statesmanlike," said James Hoefler, coordinator of the Dickinson College Policy Studies Program in Carlisle, Pa. The stunning House rejection of the plan left each side accusing the other of playing politics.

Republicans blamed Pelosi for the defeat. House GOP leader John Boehner charged her words "caused a number of members we thought we could get to go south."

Hoefler's analysis: "It was all pretty juvenile."

Divided Republicans

Adding to the ugliness was a Republican schism that has been building for years.

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