One may argue that a compromise is durable to the extent its signers make genuine sacrifices. In this compromise, conservatives and moderates have sacrificed resorting to the constitutional option that would confirm judicial nominees by a simple majority. The left has sacrificed three nominees it would have lost anyway, while thwarting two and retaining the right to apply a Senate rule of a required supermajority (60 percent to break a filibuster) not only to all other district and appellate nominees, but to nominees to the big enchilada - the Supreme Court.

Virginia's Sen. George Allen probably got it right in terming the compromise "a major disappointment on principle" for anyone believing nominees "should be accorded the fairness and due process of an up-or-down vote." He added: "It is not a great deal for two nominees who have been accorded a nice wake having been thrown overboard at sea. (And) everyone should also clearly see that ultimately, nothing has been settled when a vacancy arises on the U.S. Supreme Court."

That moment, or before, is when the test of trust and good faith will come in a Senate reflecting the increasing polarization of the nation at large: a retreat by the dwindling ideological minority into ever meaner personal destruction as its power ebbs.

Ideologically, in the nation and in the Senate, what of moderation and centrism - and genuine bipartisanship - is left anymore? The answer will come in the handling of subsequent appellate nominees to go to the Senate floor - and in the handling of the next nominee to the Supreme Court.

XXX

Ronald Reagan, discussing the SALT II nuclear weapons treaty and the Soviets, famously fashioned the phrase "trust but verify." Soon enough the nation will verify precisely how much trust the Democratic left invests in a deal allowing it to continue to abuse the Senate's filibuster rule to throttle good conservative and moderate people sent up as federal judicial nominees.