A New Beginning?

This week's Great Compromise over judicial nominations emerged thanks in part to a meeting that sounds a bit as if it took place in a wax museum. It was an atavistic scene that evoked the musty traditions of the Senate, but it also embodied the spirit of sweet reason the country needs now to solve its problems.

Gathered in an office just below the Senate floor last Thursday were two venerable, white-haired politicians clinging to the vanishing center: Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, 87, and Republican Sen. John Warner of Virginia, 78. They had in hand copies of the U.S. Constitution and the Federalist Papers. With them was the Senate historian, Richard Baker.

The senators studied the archaic language of Federalist No. 66, written by Alexander Hamilton, to fathom what the Founders envisioned as the proper role of the Senate. Hamilton's essay focused on the Senate's role as a court for impeachments, but its larger concern was the proper balance between the executive and legislative branches. After much study, the two senators reached a simple conclusion: The Senate's famous power of advice and consent on judicial nominations is a two-way street. "Advice" means consultation with the president and give and take, rather than a partisan up-or-down vote.

The compromise document that was embraced Monday night by a bipartisan group of 14 Republicans and Democrats concluded with an evocation of what Byrd and Warner had learned from their time travel back into the minds of the Founders: "Such a return to the early practices of our government may well serve to reduce the rancor that unfortunately accompanies the advice and consent process in the Senate."

"It could have happened 100 years ago -- two powerful senators struggling with the meaning of the Constitution," says Baker, who has served as Senate historian for the past 30 years. He said that when he explained to Byrd and Warner that in the Republic's early days "advice" meant active involvement before decisions were made, the two senators' eyes brightened.

I don't want to over-dramatize the importance of an agreement to preserve the Senate filibuster -- a tradition that has been used over the decades by segregationists and naysayers. But amid the politics of nastiness that prevail in 2005, this might be a modest new beginning.

There were huge smiles on the faces of the compromisers Monday night; you could sense how happy they were to have done something other than the usual partisan mudslinging. And there was the somewhat glum reaction of the Republican leader, Sen. Bill Frist, who had pursued the "nuclear option" to force judicial votes in what seemed a bid to gain right-wing support for his own 2008 presidential race. I'd like to think Frist is better off now that his partisan strategy has backfired; perhaps he will return to the more reasonable course that had led people to consider him a potential presidential candidate in the first place.

What's important here is that bipartisanship seems to be good politics. The Republicans' stance on judges and related social issues has hurt them in the polls. A CBS poll this week found 63 percent of the public favoring a 60-vote majority for judicial appointments. And a Pew Research Center poll this month found that only 35 percent of the public approved of the Republican leadership in Congress. Meanwhile, President Bush's approval ratings have continued to slide, with a Gallup/USA Today/CNN poll this week recording the highest negatives of his presidency.

It's interesting, too, that the 14 compromisers are people who still have to worry about what the general public thinks, as opposed to interest groups at the margins. A shorthand description of the group is that many of the Republicans are from blue states and many of the Democrats are from red states. That's the middle ground where effective policy is often made.

Finally, let's be reckless fools and imagine that this week's Great Compromise isn't a momentary delay in the capital's flame wars but a first step toward rebuilding a governing majority in the center. Let's imagine that the hatchet men and attack merchants get frightened, and begin to think about passing legislation rather than cultivating the base. Maybe we'd see some more profiles in courage: Democrats standing up to offer serious proposals on Social Security solvency rather than continuing to demagogue the issue, and Republicans balking at permanent tax cuts for the rich at a time when the country is running a huge deficit.

Let's enjoy the moment. There aren't many occasions when politicians defy the counsel of partisanship and do the right thing. That's what you really saw on the faces of the bipartisan group Monday night: smiles that said, this is what we came to Washington to do.

davidignatius@washpost.com