US: Partisan politics took a back seat to comity and co-operation as senators defused their filibuster dispute, writes Dan Balz, in Washington.
In a dramatic break with the ideological warfare that has defined the politics of Washington for much of the past decade, the centre held firm in the US Senate on Monday night as a bipartisan group of senators unexpectedly signed a compromise that yanked the institution back from a historic clash over judicial nominations.
The negotiators had spent a week labouring to find the language to define their agreement. But with the Senate just hours away from pulling the trigger on the "nuclear option", the seven Republicans and seven Democrats managed to defy predictions. They found both the language to make a deal possible and the courage to risk the wrath of partisans on both sides who were pushing for an all-or-nothing outcome.
"Everybody in the room wanted to get it done," said Republican senator Mike DeWine. "Everybody felt it was in the country's best interest to get this agreement made. We were very close all the way through, but we just couldn't quite get it done. It was having the looming deadline that got it done."
The fragile compromise, stitched together in the office of Republican senator John McCain, just as the Senate began an all-night session, will not necessarily end the battle over President George Bush's judicial nominees. At best the group produced a ceasefire in the judicial wars, one that will produce up-or-down votes, and probably confirmation, on three of Mr Bush's most controversial appellate court nominees. That means that two others still face filibusters and probably never will be confirmed.
After that, no one can say with certainty whether the deal will stick, particularly if there is a Supreme Court nomination in the near future. The 14 senators who joined hands on Monday night said the agreement is based on faith and goodwill, but there is no certainty or even commitment that they will continue to operate as a group once past the current nominees in question.
"I think they did what the Senate very often does," said Ross K Baker, a political science professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey. "They kicked the can down the road. They basically postponed a crisis and set up the predicate for another one in the future on the Supreme Court nomination."
Still, it was an extraordinary moment for the moderates in Congress, who have talked gamely about working across party lines but have often fallen short in delivering on their promises. For that they have been ridiculed, held up as examples of weakness and vacillation. But for the time being, they have demonstrated that there is an alternative to the partisan polarisation that has been in favour in both parties.
"We came together and we did the unexpected," Democrat senator Joe Lieberman told reporters when the agreement was announced. "In a Senate that is increasingly polarised, the bipartisan centre held."
Saying that all of them had swallowed things in the agreement they felt were less than perfect, he said: "We did it for a larger purpose: to save the right of unlimited debate, to take the Senate back from the precipice."
Republican senator Olympia J Snowe said the agreement was in the Senate's best traditions. "We believed as well that the American people didn't deserve the option of just blanket filibusters or historic parliamentary manoeuvres that overturned 200 years of tradition and precedent," she said.
The 14 members of the group said they were motivated by their desire to protect the institution of the Senate from what they believed would be a terribly disruptive act. But that motivation alone could not bridge partisan differences and grievances that both sides brought to the negotiating table.
Republicans wanted assurances that Democrats would not make filibusters the routine on judicial nominations. Democrats wanted the nuclear option taken off the table. Both sides wanted to see more consultation with the White House before submitting judicial nominees.
But there is wiggle room on both sides that leaves open the question of what will happen in the future. Democrats who signed the agreement have the right, as individuals, to filibuster future judicial nominees "under extraordinary circumstances".
Republicans reserve the right, individually, to support the nuclear option if they believe Democrats are abusing the agreement.
Democrats said the final language on that point was closer to what they had wanted. But at the news conference, DeWine explicitly said that if the agreement breaks down, Republicans in the group feel free to support the use of the nuclear option.
Senate Democrats not in the group quickly embraced the deal. Republican majority leader Bill Frist was more cautious, noting that he still believes that all judicial nominees deserve up-or-down votes and that the agreement "falls short" of that principle and "will require careful monitoring".
The negotiators know that partisanship will continue to threaten the agreement and that its success will depend both on the kind of judges Bush sends up and on whether the goodwill and good faith exhibited during the long negotiations prevails when something unexpected occurs. - LA Times - Washington Post Service