No doubt it would have been great, but I can't see how it would happen for any reasonable price. Any republican would have needed to bring back a pound of Obama's flesh if they had a chance of keeping their job.
I agree that things are way too partisan, but those are the waters that they swam in. The ACA debate wasn't so partisan because of what happened on Capitol Hill, it was that way from the start because of how it was played up in the public.
Both sides essentially painted the opposition of supporting genocide. They literally were getting everyone to believe that the other side's plan was going to kill a lot of people. When you get that kind of emotion behind an issue, compromise does not come easy.