I’m still trying to figure out how to maximize interactivity in this medium. I started out e-mailing responses to comments, then remembered that the reason I started a blog was so I could share dialogues with readers at large. The next most obvious thing to do was to offer my own comments in response to others — but then people would have to revisit an item and scroll to the bottom to discover that I had responded to them.

So I’m going to try this: I’ll single out some points made in comments, linking to the full comments as I do so, and respond in a separate posting. I would appreciate feedback as to whether you think this works.

Anyway, right now, I’d like to respond to a couple of points made by Jim Cothran and Jake, regarding my last posting:

Jim Cothran writes:

For instance, I would assume you would have had to trust John Graham Altman’s actions a few weeks ago, since he was in meetings that you were not in. Or does your line of reasoning only apply to decisions with which you agree?

Jim, I don’t think you followed my line of reasoning, if you think it would be logically consistent to follow it in the case of someone I did not vote for, and would not have voted for even if I’d had the chance. (Remember that my comments were in the context of the attitude of one who not only voted for Lindsey Graham, but worked hard to get others to vote for him.) To elaborate on what I was trying to say in response to Shell Suber’s excellent letter to the editor, when you support someone for election, you do so because you trust that person, and you are delegating him to do what you don’t have time to do — go to Washington for extended periods, study issues in detail, listen to different and opposing arguments in debate (and that’s the part that seems hardest for those angry at Sen. Graham to accept — the notion of a deliberative process) and then vote and act as his reason and conscience dictate.

I would not trust John Graham Altman to do those things, which is why I would never vote for him.

Now, to respond to Jake, who wrote in part that:

I think Shell’s letter is brave, yet misguided. There should never have been a compromise on judges, every one of them deserves and up-or-down vote…period.

I agree that that is what should happen, all the time. The Democrats’ argument that they have a right under the rules of our republic to block nominees permanently when the majority wishes to confirm them — to exercise what amounts to a minority veto — is utter nonsense. Every nominee should get an up-or-down vote. The purpose of the filibuster is merely to ensure that the minority gets a chance to be heard (and, if the world is working the way it should instead of the way it works in these hyperpartisan days, a chance to win over some who disagree).

So why support the compromise? Because under the rules of the game, the stubborn minority was in a sufficiently strong position to prevent an up-or-down vote on any of the nominees. Under the compromise, most of them will get confirmed. Yes, the Republican leadership was in a position to change the rules in the middle of the game. But that’s hardly cricket, is it? It’s something that is offensive to the sense of fairness of anyone who is not blinded by his own political position (a position that, in this case, I agree with — but I try not to let that overwhelm my sense of fairness).

The "nuclear option" was well named, because if Republicans had employed it, it would have been enormously destructive on a couple of levels. First, it would have destroyed whatever vestiges remain of the ability of senators to get along, across party lines — in a collegial and mutual respectful manner. The importance of collegiality in a deliberative body such as the U.S. Senate is something that partisans tend to sneer at — particularly partisans who happen to be in the majority at the moment.

Secondly, it could have been destructive to Republicans’ ability to lead the nation. Changing rules in the middle of the game, just because you can, tends to be offensive to objective observers. Since the beginning of this recent debate over the filibuster, I had a sense that the GOP was overreaching this time. They were going to lose the broad middle of political America. Partisans — once again, particularly when they have the upper hand — tend to forget that there is no such thing as a majority for either party without the votes of us in the middle. Polls consistently show that both parties represent minorities. If a party gets so wrapped up in its power that it forgets the need to keep the good opinion of independents, it will lose its grip on that power, because it will lose the support of the nonaligned. Think it can’t happen? Remember how Republicans came to power more than a decade ago. There were a number of factors involved, but one of them was that it was offensive to people in the middle that Democratic committee chairmen would not allow numerous bills with broad support to be debated or voted upon. Their arrogance, based in their confidence in their majority, helped lead to their downfall. To change rules in the middle of a process — rather than at some later, more neutral, time when everyone could deliberate more coolly — would have seemed to most people in this country like arrogance of power, and it would have cost the GOP.

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