Compromise isn’t a four-letter word.

So it came to pass early today when the U.S. Senate approved a deal to avoid plunging the nation into a new recession.

And it was lame-duck Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, who said it well. “You have some wins, some losses; in the end it’s about even.” Hutchison, who voted in favor of the deal, is about to leave the Senate, handing over the seat she held since 1993 to tea party zealot Ted Cruz, who doesn’t see the art of compromise as quite the shining art that Hutchison does.

Too bad for the cause of good government.

The 89-8 Senate vote seeks to keep middle-class taxes low; it stops the automatic cuts mandated by the so-called “fiscal cliff”; it boosts tax rates for families earning more than $450,000 annually; it cuts government spending. All in all, not a bad deal.

Is it perfect? No. I don’t even know how to define perfection at this point. Extremists on both ends of the spectrum sought it, threatening to increase every Americans’ taxes while enacting 10-percent across-the-board cuts in every single government agency. How is that good government?

The House of Representatives has the legislation in its lap. Some zealots – quite likely those on the Republican side – will insist on legislative purity. The buzz at this moment is that the overwhelming majority of House Democrats will sign on to the Senate package.

Those of us out here in Flyover County who believe in good government also believe that you cannot get everything you want every single time. As Sen. Hutchison noted, you win a few and you lose a few.