EDITORIAL
After showdown in Senate, it's up to Bush

Hawai'i Sen. Dan Inouye is to be congratulated for being among those who helped broker a compromise that avoided what could have been a political meltdown this week in the U.S. Senate.

That compromise allowed Senate votes to proceed on a handful of controversial judicial nominations in exchange for agreement that the right to filibuster would not be prohibited in cases of confirmation of federal judges.

This is important because the Senate is likely headed for a showdown over appointments to the Supreme Court during President Bush's second term.

In a sense, this compromise put process ahead of substance, in that Inouye and Sen. Daniel Akaka — along with many Democrats — had strong reservations about some of the individuals Bush had nominated for the federal bench.

But if Democrats had gone to the mat on these nominations, Majority Leader Bill Frist would have responded with what became known as the "nuclear option": eliminating the option of the filibuster altogether in cases such as this.

That, in turn, would have almost surely destroyed the long-term comity that has been a hallmark of the U.S. Senate.

Two things should now happen:

First, the Senate should sit down once the furor has subsided and discuss ways of modernizing or improving the filibuster process.

One possibility involves a "declining" system in which the number of votes needed to stop a filibuster would diminish from today's 60 to a bare majority over a period of weeks.

The second is for President Bush to honor that spirit of compromise that resulted in this week's agreement in his choice of a nominee for the next Supreme Court vacancy, which could come as early as this summer.

Rather than choosing a polarizing figure (of which there are many possibilities) Bush should nominate a person who has appeal across a broad political spectrum in the Senate.

Surely the president is entitled to a nominee who reflects his thinking on legal temperament and judicial approach.

But by choosing someone who can unite, rather than divide, the Senate, the president would go a long way toward restoring confidence in both the federal judiciary and in the centuries-old processes of the U.S. Senate.