Finally, compromise in the U.S. Senate

Settlement over the appointment of federal judges was, for the U.S. Senate, something like the outcome of the Cuban missile crisis. Each side removed a threat.

The Republicans agreed to hold back their "nuclear option" of melting down the filibuster. The Democrats agreed to wield the filibuster to block judges only in "extraordinary" circumstances. The Democrats agreed to accept three Bush appointments if the Republicans would sacrifice two others. Each side stepped back from the brink. Credit 14 senators — seven from each party — for retrieving the lost art of compromise.

At stake was hardly civilization or even, as Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., would have it, the Constitution. Nothing in the Constitution enshrines a senatorial right to filibuster — or to decide by a simple majority, either.

In that document, how to confirm judges is up to the Senate. What seven Democrats and seven Republicans did was to strike a deal under which the Senate's rules are preserved.

The cloture rule, which dates back to the 1970s, not the Founding, is that it takes 60 senators to force the remaining 40 to stop talking. It's tough to get 60 votes, and senators who have 52 votes, or 55, or 59, may complain bitterly that it is undemocratic, which it is.

Its purpose is to prevent the law from being changed — or appointees confirmed — by small, transient majorities.

It is a good rule to have, particularly when one party dominates both the executive and legislative branches of government, as now. Instead of exaggeration and hyperbole, it is much better to have simply struck a deal: Judges Priscilla Owen, Janice Rogers Brown and William Pryor Jr. are in, and a couple of others, out.

Both sides blinked when the Senate regained its head.