Rep. Barney Frank, D-Massachusetts, didn’t get everything he wanted in the historic sexual orientation discrimination bill approved by the House last week.

Originally, Frank and other supporters included provisions that would extend protections to transgender people in addition to homosexuals and bisexuals. But he couldn’t find enough backing in the Democratic caucus in the House to pass a broader bill.

So, he took what he could get now—momentum for legislation that could potentially stop discrimination from setting back the careers of millions of people.

Many homosexual organizations were livid with Frank for removing the transgender provisions. He asserted that these groups were letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.

They wanted it all right now, even though they had not gotten as far as a House vote on the bill in a generation. Washington rarely produces a bill that everyone can embrace, unless it has to do with renaming post offices.

Trying to reach agreement on legislation, or at least cobble together a bare majority (or 60 votes in the Senate), takes a lot of work.

Sometimes folks in the C-suite don’t understand that—perhaps because they operate in an environment where they don’t do the heavy lifting of consensus-building. A CEO’s word is law, and it is often endorsed by a handpicked board.

In Washington, there are 535 C-suites on Capitol Hill. The occupant of each one has to answer to 600,000 bosses every two years in the House or a whole state of bosses every six years in the Senate.

That can make for a messy situation in Washington that frustrates CEOs—and most of the rest of us too.

So, chief executives periodically come to town to exhort Congress to make progress on important issues. That was the case a couple weeks ago at the Council on Competitiveness annual meeting.

In a colloquy with other CEOs and experts, James Hagedorn, chairman and CEO of the Scotts Miracle-Gro Co., expressed exasperation about Washington’s inability to formulate effective energy policy.

“This city … is so full of crap,” he said.

Now, I don’t entirely disagree. Don’t get me started on what’s wrong with Washington.

But most of the time, I would make just the opposite point that Hagedorn does. Washington is not full of crap. In fact, the way it functions is often beautiful.

Look at what’s happening right now. The Democratic Congress and the Republican White House have to struggle together to reach compromises on everything from Iraq to children’s health care. Neither side ever gets exactly what it wants.

We may be a long way from solutions to major challenges like health care and energy. But the journey, even in fits and starts, will lead us to a good destination.

Our founders understood that one way to ensure Washington doesn’t run the nation off the road is to make it difficult to get anything done. In our check-and-balance government, it takes a lot of effort and patience to build coalitions and overcome opponents.

It’s a system that the rest of the world admires, even envies. Understandably, it’s not one that often gets an endorsement from CEOs. But they should appreciate its strengths before they come to town and cast aspersions.