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Head cases: how else to describe a president and House that would carve up a widely embraced program like Head Start? Thank God for the Senate.

Article Excerpt
THROUGHOUT AMERICAN HISTORY, the Senate--where small and conservative states have disproportionate weight and where rules allow one senator to block key legislation--has far more often been a force for reaction than for progress. But these are unusual times, and with an ideologically rigid administration and scores of zealots in the House, it's often fallen to the Senate to bring sanity to the legislative process. The latest case in point is the Head Start debate, which shows just how extreme the White House and the House of Representatives really are--and exposes the increasingly glaring fissures within the GOP over the administration's extremism.

The debate over Head Start reauthorization is usually the legislative equivalent of a wedding rehearsal dinner. Legislators from both sides of the aisle rise to extol the early-childhood program's virtues and speed it on its way to a lopsided vote of approval. Of all the components of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, Head Start has proven the most universally accepted. Even Ronald Reagan increased Head Start's funding while making deep cuts in other children's services. George Bush Senior gave the program the biggest funding increase in its history, only to be outdone a few years later by Bill Clinton.

But if there's one thing that defines our current President Bush,...