Same Goal, Different Tack

(The American Prospect)  This column was written by Garance Franke-Ruta.

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One of the great delusions of political movements is that politicians have to present themselves in the exact fashion a movement activist would in order to achieve the movement's goals. Often the exact opposite is the case. Activists want recognition and affirmation of their outlooks, but politicians know that the public affirmation of positions held by activist minorities can sometimes make achieving the movement's goals impossible.

Three recent instances where there is a gap between movement activists and politicians raise interesting questions about how change is actually accomplished.

The Nomination Of Harriet Miers To The Supreme Court

Conservative reactions to Miers have been swift and negative, while Democrats have been amused and pleased, which means that Miers could get even more Democratic support than Roberts did. Roberts was judicially qualified, to be sure, but the Democratic reaction to Roberts also had a great deal to do with his moderate manner and mainstream pedigree, and the fact that he was personable, courteous, and normal-seeming became a kind of proxy for knowledge of his political beliefs or likely judicial stances. Because Roberts was not a florid conservative social activist with a law degree from a third-tier university who'd spent his life in a backwater state, he scanned as "one of us" to the Ivy League-educated lawyers on the Hill.

Miers may be less culturally in sync with either Republicans or Democrats on the Hill, but Stanley Kurtz was quite right to note on The Corner that her lack of connections to movement conservatives could be a boon. "This could turn into our ultimate stealth triumph," he wrote. On Marvin Olasky's blog (via The Hotline on Call), Miers' onetime companion Nathan Hecht said that she is, despite how little she's expressed herself on such matters, in sync with the general philosophies of the fundamentalist churches on marriage and other social issues:

Miers has been a member of Valley View Christian Church in Dallas for 25 years, where Hecht has been an elder. He calls it a "conservative evangelical church … in the vernacular, fundamentalist, but the media have used that word to tar us." He says she was on the missions committee for ten years, taught children in Sunday School, made coffee, brought donuts: "Nothing she's asked to do in church is beneath her." On abortion, choosing his words carefully for an on-the-record statement, he says "her personal views are consistent with that of evangelical Christians ... . You can tell a lot about her from her decade of service in a conservative church."

Further, writes Olasky, "Hecht and Miers 'went to two or three pro-life dinners in the late 80s or early 90s.'" (Though who knows what that means; it could just be a reflection of living in Texas.)

I think it's a little fast for Democrats to start rejoicing over her nomination, though. Roberts and Miers, despite not being fervent movement conservatives, could just as easily issue opinions that dramatically curtail reproductive rights as could individuals who are more adored by James Dobson.

Movement conservatives may want transparency and authenticity from the president's Supreme Court nominees in the form of strong movement conservative credentials, but from a political perspective, the best thing George W. Bush could do is appoint two surprisingly moderate-seeming conservatives who sail onto the Court without too much scrutiny or controversy — and then proceed to undo over the next two decades much of what liberals hold dear. That, to me, seems a much more realistic scenario than the idea that Bush might secretly be pro-choice, or is now selling out the social traditionalists.

Hillary And Iraq

As Matt Bai made clear to a broader audience in his New York Times Magazine story over the weekend, a fair number of bloggers and liberal activists have started to go after New York Sen. Hillary Clinton for not articulating what they believe about how and when the United States should get out of Iraq:

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