Analysis: Two of three government branches are in distress.

WASHINGTON — There are three branches of government, and two of them are in serious distress. What once passed for governing and leadership has become a spectacle of disservice by people who call themselves public servants.

The dramatic collapse of Republican efforts to change the Affordable Care Act provides Congress an opportunity to repair itself by returning to something approaching bipartisan lawmaking. It won’t be easily accomplished.

The executive branch has been a cauldron of turbulence. Just ask Anthony Scaramucci, the swaggering, newly named White House communications director, who predicted fewer than 48 hours ago what unexpectedly transpired late Friday afternoon: Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, was fired.

The White House today has been a feuding, conniving band of officials vying for the affection of President Donald Trump, who seems to encourage, even revel in, the chaos around him. Trump named John Kelly, the Homeland Security Secretary, as chief of staff. The president called the retired Marine Corps general “a star.” But can he truly change the culture?

Washington hasn’t been working for some time; the breakdown began years ago. The dysfunction in Washington is one reason Trump was elected. But in the past six months, things have turned even worse, with the breakdown reaching new depths this week. For this, the Republicans and the president bear the responsibility.

Until Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., cast the decisive vote on the bill for a “skinny repeal” of the ACA, the Senate was operating under procedures never seen before on a piece of major legislation. Legislating is never pretty — certainly passage of the Affordable Care Act was not — but there are norms usually respected by both sides. In recent weeks, those norms went out the window as Republicans struggled to fulfill a seven-year promise that is as internally divisive as it is elusive.

The effort was transparently cynical as Republicans grasped for something, anything, that might collect the 50 votes needed to keep alive what has proved to be their futile hope of getting rid of “Obamacare.” The measure from the House was dead on arrival in the Senate. Nothing cooked up behind closed doors under Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., worked, either.

Congressional leaders are now left to pick up the pieces of a shattered and demoralizing process. What’s next no one can say. There will be angry words about the maverick from Arizona from some of his colleagues and from conservatives who have never trusted him. The president, who had disparaged McCain in the early days of his candidacy in 2015, has now felt the sting of payback.

“From the very beginning, it was clear that the fate of the Trump administration lay in the hands of the Senate Republicans,” Ross Baker, a political science professor at Rutgers University, said in an email Friday. “The Republican senators dutifully but often reluctantly did his bidding, but now they must come to the realization that he is not worthy of the loyalty he demanded.”

At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, things are just as bad, though the departure of Priebus and the arrival of Kelly offers the possibility of a reset moment of the kind that now appears possible for Congress. Since Inauguration Day, the Trump administration has been rife with factionalism, built to be undisciplined by a president who lacks discipline.

The White House can’t continue to operate this way, at least not in the true interests of the country or even those of Trump’s core supporters. In just a week, the president has made it almost untenable for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to stay in the job, drawing concerns that Trump’s ultimate target is Robert Mueller III, the special counsel charged with investigating possible links between the Trump campaign and Russia.

This was not the fault of the chief of staff. It is illustrative of the problem that now falls into Kelly’s lap.

Congress will soon depart for its annual August recess. Trump and Republican lawmakers had hoped to arrive at the summer break with a record of accomplishment, at the least with a significant down payment on the promises of the 2016 campaign. Instead, they face the bleak prospect of knowing that they have failed on their signature pledge on health care, that other legislative business remains unfinished and that the White House faces uncertain days.

The president has kept one big promise, which was to disrupt the capital. But it has not worked out quite like he and the Republicans expected.