Republicans and Democrats heaped praise on the Obama administration’s role in killing Osama bin Laden. But few expect the goodwill to ease the path for tough domestic issues, such as taming the federal debt.

Congress and the nation have grown so partisan and polarized in recent decades that even a universally embraced feat — the death of the chief terrorist behind the 2001 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans — has little ability to influence other aspects of public life.

There are many reasons. Americans have settled into more rigidly defined political sectors. The nation remains almost evenly split between the two major parties, with a relatively modest number of independent voters deciding recent elections.

In the House, trends in migration and redistricting have created many staunchly liberal and staunchly conservative districts. Voters send lawmakers to Washington who barely comprehend each other’s points of view, let alone embrace them.

With Democrats controlling the Senate and White House, Republicans see the House as their only federal power base. The more they cooperate with Obama, the more they infuriate their conservative base, and the more they help the president build a record of accomplishments that might boost his 2012 re-election campaign.

Partisanship has long shaped Congress, of course. But today’s lawmakers are more open about it. Many of them scarcely conceal their unbridled zeal to win the next election, and they pay little lip service to the notion of finding compromises that might help the general public.

Obama told a White House gathering of lawmakers Monday night that he hopes to recapture at least some of the unity that swept a stunned and grieving nation on 11 September, 2001.

“That unity that we felt on 9/11 has frayed a little bit over the years, and I have no illusions about the difficulties of the debates that we’ll have to be engaged in, in the weeks and months to come,” the president said. But Americans come together in times of tragedy, he said, and “it is my fervent hope that we can harness some of that unity and some of that pride to confront the many challenges that we still face.”

Working against such unity, however, is an ever-growing number of intensely partisan blogs, Internet sites and cable TV and radio talk shows. Recent polls indicate that the more time mainstream news outlets spent debunking the false claim that Obama was born overseas, the more Americans embraced it.

The 8 January near-fatal shooting of US Republican Gabrielle Giffords, an Arizona Democrat, prompted widespread calls for calmer political rhetoric and an end to campaign techniques such as drawing crosshairs over “targeted” opponents. It didn’t last long.

Partisans quickly accused each other of trying to exploit the tragedy for political gain. Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, said she was the victim of a “blood libel” related to her criticisms of Giffords. Her remarks triggered a new round of recriminations.

Some lawmakers held out the possibility of greater bipartisanship stemming from the raid against bin Laden, but they stopped short of predicting it.