Conventional wisdom says that President Barack Obama's State of the Union speech Tuesday evening will be the big political event of the week. But in terms of the day-to day governance of the nation, a rules vote in the Senate might be more important.

Democrats, who hold a 53-47 majority in the body (including the two independents who caucus with them), have been negotiating with Republican leaders over possible changes in the Senate rules governing filibusters and "secret holds."

The rule that requires the approval of 60 senators to move legislation forward and the rule that allows a single senator anonymously to hold up legislation or a confirmation vote are two major reasons why political observers, including many senators themselves, say the Senate is "broken."

In an influential article published Aug. 9 in The New Yorker, journalist George Packer wrote, "[I]t has become normal for a handful of senators, sometimes representing just 10 or 20 percent of the country's population, to hold everything up. And the status quo has become sufficiently frustrating that a few new senators have considered a radical option: mutiny."

Leaders of the reform effort argue that the Constitution allows a simple majority of the senators to change the rules on the first day of a session.

That was Jan. 5, but Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., continued the "legislative day" throughout the two-week Martin Luther King Jr. holiday recess, hoping that the parties could find a compromise.

The Senate goes back into session Tuesday, but it can be Jan. 5 as long as Mr. Reid wants.

Since January 2009, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., shrewdly has used the rules to block much of the Obama administration's legislative agenda. More than 350 bills passed by the House in the past two years never came to a Senate vote. Nineteen of Mr. Obama's 81 judicial nominees have yet to be confirmed.

At the same time, Mr. Reid has used the rules to shut Republicans out of the legislative process by limiting amendments and debate time. The result has been stasis and frustration in "the world's greatest deliberative body."

Democrats could, in theory, jam the rules changes through. But that would set a precedent that could come back to haunt them, possibly in as soon as two years.

A compromise proposal could allow filibusters only on the final vote for any piece of legislation but not on procedural votes. Dissenting senators actually would have to try to talk a bill to death, as in the old days. Now, only a vote is required, and there were a record 91 such votes in the past two years.

Missouri Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill thinks that requiring transparency on "holds," along with guaranteeing Republicans the right to a certain number of amendments and debate floor time, might be enough to break the logjam.

"We should make people take ownership of their holds," she told us. "Right now you never know who's doing what or why. Sometimes they're holding things to get a deal. They don't want anyone to know they're trying to get some pork or deals on other things."

If you want to know whether the post-Tucson spirit of bipartisan civility is real, ignore who's sitting with whom at the State of Union speech. Keep your eye on the rules vote.

REPRINTED FROM THE ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH