There’s lots of agreement in Washington these days that Congress is broken. But beneath that consensus is a disagreement over what a less broken Congress would look like. You can see that in reactions to the bipartisan infrastructure deal that is taking shape in the Senate.

Many observers implicitly treat the back and forth, bargaining, gamesmanship, and deal-making that’s happening as though it were the problem. It shows things are out of control, the leaders aren’t in charge, the outcome is uncertain, everybody’s always throwing a tantrum, people are playing leverage games, and the whole thing could fall apart. But I think that, as an institutional matter, all of that is a good sign. That’s what Congress is supposed to be: an arena for bargaining and negotiation, ideally across party lines and in ways that yield up unusual coalitions to arrive at messy policy compromises. To see it happening, thanks to the constructive pressure created by the filibuster and the factional tensions that divide both parties, should make us hopeful that some of Congress’s dysfunction could be relieved in time. You may not like some of the substance of the deal of course, and this kind of deal will give everyone lots to dislike. But you’ll probably like some parts of it, and we should all appreciate the way it’s taking shape. This is what the solution looks like. It’s the perfectly polarized, leadership run Congress devoid of strange coalitions and moderating deals that is the problem.