THE HURRICANE winds are starting to swirl around the patched-together shack that is the Senate compromise on judicial nominees. But Lindsey Graham, one of the key architects, thinks it might hold.

That compromise is facing a maximum test, the fight over Sandra Day O’Connor’s Supreme Court seat, just a few weeks after being reached. Because Justice O’Connor was so often a key vote, interest groups see her replacement as powerful enough to change the direction of the court.

Those pressure groups already are ratcheting up their rhetoric, fund-raising and advocacy ads, making the coming fight “a big test” for the Senate, Sen. Graham says, and for the deal made by 14 senators.

Abortion rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America fired off 800,000 e-mails within 15 minutes of the retirement announcement. Religious conservatives have been taking preemptory shots at Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, fearing he would be too moderate for their liking.

About the compromise, Francis Marion University political scientist Neal Thigpen told Lee Bandy of The State: “We’re going to see what that thing is made of. It could well fold up like a house of cards.”

Neither of the more partisan wings of the two major parties liked the deal that Sen. Graham helped patch together.

Made by seven Senate Democrats and seven Republicans, the deal was reached with a Supreme Court nomination looming — most thought it would be over Chief Justice William Rehnquist’s replacement. But the agreement, Sen. Graham noted Wednesday, was crafted to break the deadlock of lower court nominees.

The deal held that seven of the president’s filibustered nominees would be voted upon, while two nominations would stall out, never to get a vote. In return, the Democrats pledged not to support a future filibuster of a nominee to the bench, except under “extraordinary circumstances.”

What’s an extraordinary circumstance? The standard was “intentionally left undefined,” the senator says. It’s up to the judgment of individual senators to see if they think a nomination raises such a circumstance.

That agreement, while it set the fate of several judicial nominees, really was about the health and well-being of the Senate. Sen. Graham says the working atmosphere, when it came to judicial picks, was poisonous, and that the Democrats who joined the filibuster compromise could see this: “Most felt the Senate had gotten itself into a very unhealthy spot.

“The agreement allowed us to start over.”

The forces that pushed the Senate into that corner will be unleashed full-force when a nominee is announced. Groups on the left will attack virtually any pick by the Bush administration, he expects, and “I know some on the right are itching for a fight.”

But he hopes the Senate itself will get back to the more restrained, traditional debate of nominees’ qualifications, not over detailed debates of positions and past rulings.

He points, as others have, to the confirmation of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a Clinton nominee. Justice Ginsburg had served as counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, but was confirmed overwhelmingly. That’s unimaginable in today’s climate. Antonin Scalia held similar posts that could have inflamed Democrats, but he, too, went smoothly onto the bench, because he so obviously was qualified.

As the special-interest groups see influencing the courts as the acme of their advocacy roles, this will be their biggest showdown. But for American government to function better than it has, the tone and caliber of the Senate’s debate of this nomination seems more important than that pick itself.

The nation’s close political division tends to lock the Senate into inaction; the Senate is, by both design and evolution, supposed to give the minority view a forum to be heard, and a chance to cool the impulses of the majority. It forces compromise, thereby reining in the extremes of both parties. And right now, there’s nothing American politics could use more than the reining-in of the extremes.

Sen. Graham expects President Bush to nominate a “solid conservative” who will get an up-or-down vote. He believes that White House consultation with senators, including Judiciary Committee members from both parties, already has improved the chances of a relatively smooth confirmation.

And he thinks the deal, and the air of compromise that it added to the Senate, will hold, despite the outside pressures. “I go in optimistic, but with a sense of realism.

“We’re at war; we don’t need another war in the Senate.”

Write to Mr. Fitts at mfitts@thestate.com.