FWIW to a man the Founding Fathers, (the authors of the Constitution) were compromisers. The Constitution is a textbook example of how great things can be achieved if men of good faith are principled to a point but willing to compromise in order to achieve a better good.
Ronald Reagan was a consummate compromiser. He worked with a congress that despised him (on both sides of the aisle), gave them enough of a bone to keep them pacified and in the end achieved great things for this country.
The only problem we face today is that on the Democrat side, there are few, if any, men of good faith. Democrats today are drunk with power to a point where not even Ronald Reagan could pacify their insatiable appetite for totalitarian centralized power.
More than anything else we need to have conservatives in power in the Senate and Congress.
The principle that got compromised in the Constitution was slavery. The "better good" of which you cavalierly speak kept hundreds of thousands of people in slavery (untold millions over the time frame) for 3/4 of a century. I bet not a single slave, man, woman, or child thought the Founders made a compromise for the better good. I would venture that not one of the almost million who died during the Civil War or the millions of their survivors thought the Founders made a valid compromise for the "better good".
Ronald Reagan was a consummate compromiser. He worked with a congress that despised him (on both sides of the aisle), gave them enough of a bone to keep them pacified and in the end achieved great things for this country.
It may have escaped your attention, but the United States is on the verge of bankruptcy. If it weren't for the Unconstitutional compromise of the Federal Reserve, the US would have been in actual default on its obligations, actually, instead of just arguably, bankrupt along time ago because of the consummate compromises made between Reagan and the Democrats. You just haven't recognized the toll that has already been taken and what is going to happen that hasn't yet unfolded. Ronald Reagan bought us some time, but it was at a huge cost and we are arguably far worse off now than we might have been if he had stood his ground and the people had gotten behind him. We will never know or be able to calculate the results.
If one is certain of what is right and what is wrong, compromising what you know to be right is always taking a step in the wrong direction. If one is uncertain about what is right and what is not, compromise is a solid hedge of your bet in hopes that you don't go to far in the wrong direction and end up going over a cliff.
Compromise is one of those touchy-feely ideas that sounds good and people are easily persuaded to participate, but history and the facts tell us that compromising principles that we know to be true ends in tragedy of epic proportions and is obvious folly.