Doctor Faust — er, Frist — seemed disappointed that a last-minute compromise prevented him from blowing up two hundred years of Senate tradition with his innovative nuclear option. But he needn’t feel that he’s accomplished nothing. Even without pulling the nuclear trigger, Senator Frist has poisoned the atmosphere in the Senate in a way that can probably never be undone.

The Constitution of the United States says “Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings,” and over the years, the Senate has accumulated a long list of rules, including rules defining how those rules may be changed. The current rules require a three-fifths majority to cut off debate on an issue. Even larger majorities are required to change the rules. The idea is to avoid precipitous and foolish changes to serve the passions of the moment.

Some of those rules were inconvenient to Doctor Frist, so he proposed his diabolical innovation: that the Vice-President can dictate what the rules of the Senate are, so long as he has fifty like-minded Senators to uphold his decrees.

It doesn’t matter that Bill Frist didn’t get to pull the nuclear trigger today. The idea, once thought, can’t be unthought. From now on, until the U.S. government itself has crumbled into dust, any time the Vice-President and half the Senate wish to dictate the outcome of any deliberation, that devilish Fristian bargain will be there, tempting them.

The nuclear genie isn’t going back in the bottle.