Later, a subgroup of five members negotiated the details with House Speaker Thomas P. O’Neill Jr. and the Reagan administration in numerous private meetings in lawmakers’ offices, at the home of the White House chief of staff, James A. Baker III, and at the presidential guesthouse. Congress enacted the resulting compromise in 1983.

Secrecy has also enabled commissions to succeed on national security issues. Few people thought the 9/11 Commission could reach a consensus because its membership included five Republicans and five Democrats. They disagreed on many issues, including the use of subpoenas to compel administration cooperation and the assignment of blame to both the Clinton and Bush administrations. But the group ultimately reached consensus on all of its findings and recommendations, including the establishment of the position of national intelligence director. Though the secrecy of many of its meetings provided grist to the mill of (unfounded) 9/11 conspiracy theories, it was necessary.

Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content , updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters.

The commission’s leaders, Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, established a bipartisan environment by speaking to the public in tandem and prohibiting commissioners from sitting next to fellow party members at meetings. Encouragingly, the leaders of the deficit super committee, Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, and Representative Jeb Hensarling, Republican of Texas, have a friendly and cooperative relationship.

Compared to independent commissions, however, the super committee has a disadvantage: all of its members are sitting members of Congress. For Democrats on the committee, political danger lurks if they back any cuts to entitlement programs, whereas for Republicans, support for any tax increases is even more perilous.

The attacks on the committee for meeting in private are probably motivated as much (or more) by fear of the committee’s succeeding as by a commitment to open government. Those calling for greater committee transparency are largely staunch conservatives, like Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, or staunch liberals, like Representative Jan Schakowsky, Democrat of Illinois, who have opposed a grand bargain that includes significant tax increases and entitlement cuts. They surely know that it will be harder to reach agreement if the panel cannot meet privately.

Critics say it is undemocratic for the super committee to exclude the public from its meetings. But on all issues, elected officials carry out much of their work behind closed doors; secrecy is not in itself undemocratic. Critics also argue that greater transparency would help the committee win broader support by bringing other lawmakers and the public into the process at an earlier stage. But transparency would actually make it far less likely that members would move past posturing to negotiations, and would enable critics to pick apart ideas under consideration before the members could make a strong case for them.

In an age when elected officials rarely deliberate across party lines, private discussions should be welcomed, rather than attacked. This is all the more true considering that the fundamental task before the committee is not to establish facts, but to find a political sweet spot. The committee’s success remains a long shot in our age of extreme ideological polarization, but its secrecy gives it a glimmer of hope.