Compromise

So 14 'moderate' Senate Democrats and Republicans have come together to make a deal. Whatever the meaning of the deal, no one seems happy with it.

Rightist Republicans are having hissy fits, while leftist Dems feel they've been rolled yet again. I've no idea what I feel, but I do think this: now's too soon to cast judgement. 6 months, a year down the line, after a Supreme Court fight and running into the 2006 mid-terms, that's when we'll know whether this deal was a good, bad or utterly insignificant.

To be sure, it sticks in my craw to think that William Pryor, Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers Brown will now get lifetime positions on the federal judiciary:

Pryor is a far right activist. He tried to repeal the voting Rights Act, disenfranchise gays, lobbied hard for the NRA and big tobacco. Now, you could say all this is just political - unpalatable to some though it may be - but Pryor has been fingered in a major fundraising scandal. He solicited political contributions from the same corporations facing litigation in his state. To anyone with any sense of values, that makes him damaged goods. Brown wants to repeal the New Deal, end the minimum wage, repeal church-state separation and end retirement as we know it. Owen is so extreme Attorney General Gonzales - himself a hideous choice - accused her of repeatedly ignoring the law, pursuing “an unconscionable act of judicial activism” and trying to “judicially amend the statute". She too is demonstrably corrupt: she took contributions from law firms and corporations — including Enron and Halliburton — and then, ruled in their favor when their cases came before her.

These people have no business practicing any form of professionally regulated work. They shouldn't be regional mangers of an office supply company. They shouldn't be running a McDonald's franchise. They shouldn't be teaching kindergarten. But they're going straight to the circuit courts. Now, that pisses me off. But I guess creeps like this will always exist. It's just they shouldn't get given silver-platter chances to prosper. And as for those who'd propose such people, who'd sponsor them and wish to enable them - we catch another glimpse of their thought process: self-denying, valueless and amoral. A philosophy of life that, considering their religious pretences, borders on the sociopathic.

But these judges weren't the worst. These were the ones the Dems found it in themselves to let through.

The Republican guard wants to destroy all dissent. It's sickening that they'd willingly wipe away one of the oldest and most venerated Senate traditions - the right to filibuster - but the fact is: they would. That's the reality. I can understand the reasoning that would want to keep that right (which should be non-negotiable) intact for the time being. Because what we're up against is an existential threat. Just think about it: 2004, by hook or by crook the Repubs snag the Senate seats they need to make this 'nuclear option' a reality and then, drop of a hat, they're are ready smash the place to hell to get these kinds of characters in to rule in the highest courts of the land.

They don't have your best interests at heart.

But more importantly - and again this is not the kind of thing you can judge until far later in the game - is whether the deal's real value is psychological.

The Democrat's only hope right now is to let the Republicans fissure along ideological grounds. A key part of this is prising Republican moderates free from the vice of the rump party which has gone completely fucking loco.

I have my own opinions about the backbone these 'moderates' possess, but let's give them the benefit of the doubt - they must be under unimagineable pressure from people who could teach the mafia a thing or too about blackmail, bribery and extortion. So if this deal is just a babystep in letting Senate Republican moderates act for themselves - go with your conscience, sure feels good don't it? - then that's no small thing and that's good. The only way you fight successfully with a 44-55 disparity is by peeling off some of the other side's guys. That's basic tactics. And I imagine that was a big part of the thinking behind this deal.

Finally, whatever I or someone like me on the other side likes and dislikes about this thing - it's a classic, textbook compromise. How can I be so sure? Because everyone hates it. Everyone thinks they've been screwed. No one's happy. That's how you know you've reached a compromise. Whether it was a good deal for your side or not, you won't know that till the game's far further down the line. And there's a lesson there, too - if you think this hurts, imagine how tough it must be for the different sides in the Middle East to come to an agreement.

You don't make deals like this without everyone hating it. That's why Rabin was killed by one of his own. And that's what the leaders of the Palestinians and the Israelis are going to have to manage to make any lasting agreement.

I'm not condoning their behaviour either way, I just think it's interesting to taste the disappointment and emotional effect of a political compromise - even one as limited as this - and then magnify it a few thousand times to feel what stands between violence in the Middle East and some kind of lasting agreement.