Governor Dannel P. Malloy’s state budget plans have exhibited all the drama of a high dive, complete with the many possible unfortunate outcomes of your average plunge off a cliff. The various twists, tumbles, and last-minute flailings in the cause of balance and political poise have lined up this budget plan to land with the kind of splash that will soak almost everyone. The sales tax is rising from 6 to 6.35 percent and will be applied to a host of goods and services that were previously exempt, affecting everyone and everything from the American Kennel Club to zip-up hoodies.

While the governor is honoring his pledge not to touch the $1.9 billion Education Cost Sharing program, which makes up the bulk of state funding for local schools, other school expenditures are slated for deep cuts, including $13 million cut from the budgets of Connecticut’s 17 technical high schools. Higher education institutions are facing another $59 million in cuts. And $21 million will be saved by shuttering Department of Motor Vehicle offices (including the Danbury office), state armories, prisons in Enfield and Storrs, and, alas, the Second Company Governor’s Horse Guard facility here in Newtown.

As the first pink slips trickled out to the 6,500 state workers facing layoffs, the State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition (SEBAC) had a change of heart about its own rules governing contract ratification, setting the stage for a do-over of the labor unions’ rejection of the governor’s package of contract concessions designed to save the state $1.6 billion.

The people of Connecticut are learning quickly that their new governor is serious about facing up to realities of the state’s fiscal crisis if not the realities of his own political standing; a poll conducted by Quinnipiac University last month showed that Mr Malloy’s approval rating among state voters had slipped to 37 percent, which puts him the doghouse with several other governors around the country facing the same bleak budget outlook. While there are legitimate questions about whether all the proposed savings from cutbacks and possible labor concessions will add up as projected, it is clear that Gov Malloy is ready to deal with this crisis on the basis of reality and not ideology or political orthodoxy. And that gives us hope.

There are times when we all must stand on principle, and there are times — especially times of crisis — when we must consider abandoning that perch to stand on common ground, where so many down-and-dirty solutions to our most intractable problems take root. This year, the word compromise has become a pejorative in certain quarters, used not in its sense of give and take, but in its sense of betrayal — usually of some sacred ideal. This negative spin on the word has made it all the more difficult to solve our problems.

We stand on principle to show the world who we would like to be. We retreat to stand on common ground to show the world that we understand who we actually are. And that kind of reality-based action, riddled with sacrifice as it is, offers us our best escape from deadlock, our safest way down from the cliff, and our quickest return to principle.