BeeLine: It Was Ugly. It Is Supposed To Be Ugly.

Several polls have come out in the wake of the debt ceiling limit and budget vote. A Pew Research Center poll asked people to describe their feelings about the process in one word. Words like "ridiculous", "disgusting" , "stupid" and "frustrating" were at the top of the list in describing the recent political theatre in Washington.

A CNN/ORC poll released today indicates that just 44% of those polled approved of the agreement to "raise the federal government's debt ceiling through the year 2013 and make major cuts in government spending over the next few years," while 52 percent disapprove. Only 35 % of Republicans and Indpendents approve of the deal while 63% of Democrats indicated they were in favor.

"Specific elements of the agreement are more popular than the agreement overall, however, suggesting the tumultuous and often times messy process had a negative impact on Americans and their perception of Washington. One measure of that: the percentage of Americans who approve of the way Congress is handling its job has shrunk to an abysmal 14 percent, easily the lowest measure in five years of CNN polling.

Asked specifically about raising the debt ceiling, Americans are more mixed, with 48 percent approving and 51 percent disapproving. But here too, independents are squarely against raising the debt limit, 37 percent to 61 percent.

A strong majority supports cutting about a trillion dollars in spending over the next ten years, with provisions to cut more in the future. Democrats (68 percent), Republicans (72 percent) and independents (60 percent) all approve of the spending cuts.

But Americans disapprove of the lack of tax increases on businesses and higher-income Americans in the final agreement. Just 40 percent approve of the fact that the agreement does not contain tax increases. A majority, 60 percent, disapprove of the final package not containing those increases.

What does all this mean? It means that the system is working exactly as our Founding Fathers designed it to work in our Constitution. David Rivkin, Jr. and Lee Casey refer to it as "A Debt Deal The Founders Could Love" in today's Wall Street Journal.

The debt-ceiling crisis has prompted predictable media laments about how partisan and dysfunctional our political system has become. But if the process leading to the current deal was a "spectacle" and a "three-ring circus," as Obama adviser David Plouffe put it, the show's impresarios are none other than James Madison and Alexander Hamilton. Our messy political system is working exactly the way our Founders intended it to.

To the extent House members were the most intransigent during the process—a matter of opinion, in any case—they were meant to be. The House of Representatives is the "popular branch," as described in The Federalist Papers, and was intended to "have an immediate dependence on, and an intimate sympathy with, the people."

Many people, especially those who elected tea party candidates last November, passionately believe that the federal government has gone off the rails. They think that Washington has been spending like a drunken sailor since President Obama took office, and that this profligacy must end.

By contrast, the Framers conceived the Senate as a body of graybeards (or, at the very least, as modestly mature individuals who have reached the age of 30). It was meant to represent the interests of the states and to serve as a check on "the impulse of sudden and violent passions," or the danger of "factious leaders" offering "intemperate and pernicious resolutions" that might in time characterize the lower house. If the Senate has been less willing than the House to call an immediate halt to federal borrowing and to seek a more gradual return to fiscal responsibility, this too is exactly what it is supposed to do.

The result was a compromise, as it has nearly always been throughout our history. This will be a disappointment to many who voted for real and immediate fiscal restraint, but that too is to be expected. The Framers believed in gradual change. They prized stability and predictability. Most would have agreed with Talleyrand's injunction—"above all, not too much zeal"—and themselves watched as Talleyrand learned this lesson the hard way. An early and enthusiastic participant in the French Revolution, France's future foreign minister was forced to take refuge in the United States after his countrymen started cutting off heads.

Accordingly, the Framers rejected a parliamentary system of government, where power is concentrated in the legislature and very often in one house of the legislature. There truly are winners and losers in such political systems, and governmental policy can indeed be transformed immediately after a new government takes office.

By contrast, our Constitution diffuses power both vertically among the federal government and states and horizontally among the three branches of the federal government—and then again within Congress itself. Change, even good and necessary change, is always difficult. It must be based on consensus.

The result this week is not what I wanted. Nor is it what President Obama wanted. Or John Boehner. Or Harry Reid. Or even the angry callers to the conservative and liberal talk radio shows. However, this is exactly the way it was supposed to work. This is particularly the case with the way the House led the way. The Founding Fathers would be very pleased. The system that they set up worked exactly the way they wanted it with the branch the federal government most attuned to the People proving to be the biggest obstacle for government as usual.

Rarely in our system do the participants, whether in the House, Senate or White House, achieve all or even most of their goals in a single political battle. Sunday night, a debt-ceiling deal was reached that will raise the federal debt ceiling and permit continued borrowing to fund federal government operations through 2012 rather than just for another six months. The hard questions—taxes and spending cuts—have largely been postponed.

But the key point has been made. Few now suggest that we can continue on our current spending binge. That is the beginning of a consensus, and a good start towards genuine change. Postponing the difficult questions also means that the electorate can have its say in the 2012 elections, and represents significant political risks for all parties.