Just when you thought you had a handle on the Miers nomination, a document emerged today from her thin dossier that could change the dynamics dramatically. Senate sources released material from a routine questionnaire answered by the nominee, disclosing that as a candidate for Dallas City Council in 1989, Miers informed the local branch of Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum that she supported the so-called Human Life Amendment, a constitutional amendment that would endow human embryos with the full protections of “personhood” accorded by every other provision of the constitution, from the moment of conception. The White House quickly issued a statement downplaying the disclosure: “A candidate taking a political position in the course of a campaign is different from the role of a judge making a ruling in the judicial process.” Well, yeah, sorta kinda, but not really, and so what? Yes, it’s theoretically possible to believe that Roe v. Wade is a settled judicial precedent that should be, and can only be, reversed by a constitutional amendment. But let’s remember what the Human Life Amendment (in its most common iterations) was designed to do: not simply reverse Roe and return the subject of abortion to the states and to Congress, but instead to permanently ban any federal or state legislation permitting abortion at any stage of pregnancy after conception (with the sole exception of conditions threatening the life of the mother). Arguably, the Human Life Amendment would create a constitutional challenge to laws allowing the dispensation of contraceptives that prevent implantation of a fertilized ovum in the uterine wall. It would definitely lead to a judicially-enforced ban on the widespread practice of embryo destruction by IV fertility clinics, not to mention embryonic stem cell research. In other words, support for the Human Life Amendment is the most extreme position imaginable on abortion, and one which–precisely because it reflects the belief that the courts should define the word “person” as contained in the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment as including embryos–is based on an implicit injunction to the most radical form of judicial activism. Indeed, for all the whining about judicial usurpation of legislative prerogatives that’s become so common on the Cultural Right, it’s this–a judicial reading of the anti-abortion movement’s interpretation of the word “person” right into the Constitution–that has long been their ultimate fantasy, abandoned for tactical reasons in favor of the current drive to undermine and then reverse Roe. Who knows, maybe Miers was just checking a conservative box on that Eagle Forum questionnaire, and maybe she didn’t and doesn’t embrace a radical interpretation of what it means in the U.S. Constitution to be a “person.” But aside from its political ramifications, this disclosure means her inquisitors in the Senate Judiciary Committee should not be satisfied with questioning her about the constitutional underpinnings of Roe, such as Griswold and the right to privacy. A belief in fetal “personhood” as a constitutional doctrine trumps all those issues. And unless Miers and her defenders come up with a better explanation than “that was then, this is now,” it could introduce a whole new dimension in a confirmation debate where her lack of qualifications, and her evangelical Christian identity, have been the only issues.

Over the weekend, Markos of DailyKos, pondering his California absentee ballot, posed a very pertinent question: why shouldn’t he vote for Proposition 77, Arnold Schwarzenneger’s redistricting reform initiative? Yes, he suggests, it might have a short-term negative impact on Democratic margins in the congressional delegation and the state legislature, but if it contributes to a national redistricting reform movement, it’s likely to help Democrats nationally, particularly if Democratic-backed reform initiatives in Ohio (this year) and Florida (next year) succeed as well.I can’t answer Markos’ question definitively, but do want to draw attention to peculiarities of the California initiative that make it different from those in the other states. I’ve written about this subject extensively here and here (note that the first piece was written before the Ohio initiative got underway, while the second was written before the California initiative overcame a judicial challenge), so I’ll just hit the high points.Prop 77 relies heavily on the assumption that nonpartisan redistricting is (a) feasible, and (b) will produce a more balanced map. Both these assumptions are very questionable. But that’s why the initiative focuses so heavily on who draws the maps, rather than what criteria they use. The Ohio initiative (and for that matter, the Florida initiative that’s now in a legal limbo) requires use of partisan voter registration and performance data to create an overall redistricting plan that maximizes both competitive districts and statewide partisan fairness, while the California initiative prohibits use of such data and does not make competitiveness or partisan fairness criteria at all. The one state that has successfully applied this take-the-politics-out approach to redistricting is Iowa, but Iowa, with its relatively homogenous population, stable partisan balance, and strong “good government” tradition, is not California, by a long shot. So in the end, Prop 77 is pretty much a leap into the unknown. Thus, for Democrats in particular, the decision on Prop 77 is pretty much a matter of how you feel about the current map and the system that created it. But there’s one major piece of misinformation circulating (it’s very visible in the comment thread after Markos’ post) that needs to be refuted: the idea that the current map is a standard-brand partisan gerrymander that maximized Democratic seats. Not so. For both the congressional delegation and the state legislature, the Democratic leadership pursued an incumbent-protection strategy that all but eliminated competitive districts. Yes, it created a floor under Democratic majorities, but also created a ceiling. In effect, the map traded potential opportunities to win new Democratic seats for the assurance that incumbents wouldn’t have to worry about general elections. (Another motive, according to everybody I’ve talked to, was to enable primary challenges to centrist Democrats in the state legislature, many of which succeeded). California’s situation is in sharp contrast to that of Ohio and Florida, where the reigning Republicans did indeed focus on partisan advantage to the exclusion of virtually every other factor.In other words, the Democratic advantage in California’s congressional delegation and state legislature is the product of an unavoidable Democratic advantage among voters, not of Democratic control of redistricting. And there’s no particular reason to believe the system established by Prop 77 would change that reality. The bottom line for me is that I don’t like the system set out in Prop 77, but I also don’t think partisanship is a good reason for opposing it, particularly since the current map is so egregiously aimed at eliminating competition altogether. I hope this analysis helps Markos and other California Dems make their decision. All redistricting reforms are not created equal; nor is the status quo in Democratic and Republican-controlled states the same. It’s entirely possible to oppose Prop 77 while supporting the initiatives in Ohio and Florida on substantive grounds, but not because California’s current system is particularly good for Democrats, or for democracy.

A Republican gubernatorial candidate in a close race launches a vicious attack on his opponent as a weak-kneed liberal who coddles illegal immigrants and criminals and opposes the death penalty. Where are we? California, circa 1986? Nope, it’s the Commonweath of Virginia in 2005, where Jerry (No Relation) Kilgore is bringing back the cultural wedge issues of a bygone era with a vengeance.The rationale for this atavistic effort is a bit tangled. Kilgore’s big problem is that incumbent Democratic Governor Mark Warner is very, very popular. Democratic candidate and Lieutenant Governor Tim Kaine is his designated successor. Having spent four years fighting everything Warner has tried to do, ol’ Jerry cannot exactly claim he’ll build on the Warner legacy. To be sure, Kilgore is more than willing to make spending promises, especially on the critical transportation needs of Northern Virginia, based on using the tax revenues he fought to deny the Commonweath. And he’s trying to coopt the Warner magic in more subtle ways as well. Down in central Virginia, the landscape is covered with big “Sportsmen for Kilgore” signs that are carbon copies of the “Sportsmen for Warner” signs of 2001.But nobody really believes Jerry is a sensible centrist like Warner, so his only option is to claim that Kaine isn’t either.As the Washington Post‘s Robert Barnes noted yesterday:

Kaine has based his campaign on the promise that he is the logical choice to “keep Virginia moving forward” since Warner is barred from seeking reelection. But the Kilgore campaign believes it can break open what both sides describe as an extremely close race by portraying the lieutenant governor as a chameleon who doesn’t share Warner’s middle-of-the-road persona.

The strategy is “separating Kaine from Warner and further making the case he’s not Mark Warner part two,” said a Republican strategist familiar with the campaign who would discuss campaign tactics only on condition of anonymity. “It is probably one of the most crucial elements for success.”

Hence the barrage on old-style cultural issues where Kilgore can claim Kaine diverges from Warner.Kilgore has constantly sought to exploit a local dispute in the Washington exurbs over a day laborer gathering point (which Kaine, accurately, calls an issue not within the state’s power to control) to luridly suggest the Old Dominion is about to be overrun by illegal immigrants and Hispanic gangs, even claiming they are connected to al Qaeda.But ol’ Jerry’s demagogic Big Bertha, which he appears to have kept in reserve for the home stretch, is reflected in the wave of ads he’s running about Kaine’s opposition to the death penalty, which feature relatives of murder victims (include one whose killer Kaine defended as a court-appointed attorney) excoriating the Lieutenant Governor.Kaine has put up an ad offering a dignified response, speaking personally about the basis for his opposition to the death penalty in his Catholicism; making it clear he will enforce the current law if elected; and rather frankly denying there’s any particular connection between executions and violent crime rates, which are, in any event, near historic lows.It’s too early to tell whether Kilgore’s gambit will succeed. If he wins after this low-road effort, the implications will extend well beyond the misgovernment Virginians will be virtually guaranteed for the next four years (not to mention the personal pain I will experience in having my surname tainted).”Off-year” elections are almost invariably over-interpreted by political analysts, and over-imitated by political pros. I can’t imagine anything that would poison this country’s already toxic political climate more than a decision by Republican operatives to supplement the Karl Rove generation of cultural wedge issues with those of the late Lee Atwater.If Jerry loses, on the other hand, maybe this kind of crap can be put in a political Superfund site, roped off with skull-and-cross-bones signs, and buried for a very long time.

As the furor over the Harriet Miers nomination has grown, I’ve been wondering when somebody would finally produce an insider account of how, mechanically, the choice was made. Sure, there are plenty of theories, but not much in the way of actual information.That changed today. While it’s not exactly a tick-tock account, John Fund in the Wall Street Journal provides a peek behind the veil, and in particular helps us understand why the White House seemed to be blind-sided by the powerfully negative reaction.Read it yourself, but the basic story line is this: the moment John Roberts was nominated to become Chief Justice, Bush and his staff decided O’Connor’s replacement would be a woman. Miers started the usual intensive vetting process for the women on the short list. Andy Card suggested to Bush that Miers herself be considered. Bush agreed. Card ordered Miers’ deputy, William Kelley (who had just been hired) to carry out a quiet vetting of Miers “behind her back.” Kelley soon came back with a green light. Card formally proposed her nomination to Bush; POTUS signed off; Laura Bush jumped on board. Card told the rest of the staff, and angrily overrode objections. Total secrecy about the pick was imposed. It was announced according to a rigid schedule, and then all hell broke loose.The two things that really stand out about this account are:(1) Where was the Helmsman, Karl Rove in all this? Fund doesn’t say, though there’s a lot of circumstantial evidence kicking around that the post-decision political vetting of Miers was even more haphazard than the vetting of her qualifications for the Court. Is this because Rove was distracted by other tasks (e.g., overseeing Katrina recovery and trying to avoid an indictment)? Or was it because nobody, even Rove, wanted to raise objections about an appointment to which Bush was very committed personally? Or, worse yet, did Rove simply think he could quickly sell Miers to conservatives on grounds of the usual Machine loyalty, underestimating the growing unhappiness of the Right with W.’s overall performance? All of these factors may have come into play.(2) Card’s back-door vetting of Miers by her own deputy almost guaranteed a sloppy process. As Fund points out, the conflicts-of-interest this step imposed on Kelley were formidable–investigating his own boss behind her back for a position that might pave the way to his own promotion, knowing all the while the risks of becoming the messenger who would be shot for bearing bad news about Bush’s close friend. And presumably, Kelley had to do a lot of this on his own, without the resources or time available to Miers in her own, official vetting process. That’s the big irony here: the famously process-obsessed perfectionist Miers got her big break from a process that glaringly diverged from her own standards.And the price she and the White House are paying for that lapse in discipline grows higher every day.I normally wouldn’t quote from one of those columns now sequestered by the New York Times as “premium content,” but David Brooks today penned a pitiless dissection of Miers’ columns for the Texas Bar Journal in the early ’90s that illustrates the kind of material a serious vetting of her would have revealed. He supplies paragraph after paragraph of samplings from “the largest body of public writing we have from her,” and even aside from Miers’ mangled syntax and a fatal addiction to passive verb constructions, it’s not a pretty sight. (My own favorite: “When consensus of diverse leadership can be achieved on issues of importance, the greatest impact can be achieved.” Word up.)As Brooks himself concludes: “I don’t know if by mere quotation I can fully convey the relentless march of vapid abstractions that mark Miers’ prose. Nearly every idea is vague and depersonalized. Nearly every debatable point is elided.”And so it goes, another predictably negative revelation about a nominee whose main distinguising features are her work habits, a genial personality, and a devotion to church, family and most of all W.My gut feeling is that Bush let her down by exposing her to this ridicule. And though it’s hard to tell at this point, he may be exposing Harriet Miers and himself to a humiliating experience in the Senate.

The headline news today on the Miers nomination is Laura Bush’s suggestion that resistance to the nominee among conservatives may be based on reflexive sexism, an argument that made the Right go nuts when RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie articulated it in private meetings earlier on.But the more important news, written up by David Kirkpatrick in today’s New York Times, is that there is a revolt brewing among Republican Senate staffers, especially those on the Judiciary Committee, against the nomination:

As the White House seeks to rally senators behind the Supreme Court nomination of Harriet E. Miers, lawyers for the Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee are expressing dissatisfaction with the choice and pushing back against her, aides to 6 of the 10 Republican committee members said yesterday.”Everybody is hoping that something will happen on Miers, either that the president would withdraw her or she would realize she is not up to it and pull out while she has some dignity intact,” a lawyer to a Republican committee member said.All the Republican staff members insisted on anonymity for fear of retaliation from their supervisors and from the Senate leaders.

At two stormy meetings on Friday – the first a planning meeting of the chief counsels to Republican committee members and the second a Republican staff meeting with Ed Gillespie, the former Republican Party chairman who is helping to lobby for the nomination – committee lawyers were unanimous in their dismay over Ms. Miers’s qualifications and conservative credentials, several attendees said….”You could say there is pretty much uniform disappointment with the nomination at the staff level,” another Republican on the committee staff said. “It is clear there is quite a bit of skepticism, and even some flashes of hostility.”Another Republican aide close to the committee said, “I don’t know a staffer who approves of this nomination, anywhere. Most of it is outright hostility throughout the Judiciary Committee staff.”In an interview on Tuesday, Mr. Specter emphasized that the senators would make their own decisions.”I think those staffers, like anybody else, have a right to their opinions and to express them,” he said. “Senators will make independent judgments. You have some pretty strong staffers on the committee, but you have got some stronger senators.”

Specter’s quote is very interesting, because (a) it appears to be his own Judiciary Committee staff who are the chief grousers about Miers, and (b) throughout his long Senate career, the Pennsylvanian has consistently distinguished himself for imperious treatment of staff in an institution where Sun King disdain for the opinions of underlings is standard.You don’t have to put on a tin-foil hat to wonder if Specter is playing a double game on Miers, especially given his own rather conflicted comments about her qualifications. Maybe the White House’s well-known injunctions to Specter to get along better with conservatives are producing some unintended and ironic consequences.

I wasn’t inclined to comment on the relatively-little-noticed topic of Joe Lieberman’s attendance at the 50th anniversary dinner for National Review. But my colleague The Moose has more or less challenged my mammalhood or Murrowhood if I fail to weigh in, so I will.Let me warn you: this is going to be one of those long posts that probably depress this site’s traffic while offering up easy targets for people who will stop reading once they hit a bump in the argument. But stick with it if you can; it’s an interesting subject when you dig a bit deeper. For those of you who missed it, Atrios went after Lieberman for his prominent position at the NR dinner, citing a 1957 National Review editorial that defended the South’s efforts to ban voting rights for African-Americans on grounds that it was defending a “superior” civilization. Markos linked to Atrios, but appeared to simply (and rather mildly) deplore Lieberman’s action on the usual fraternization-with-the-enemy grounds. The Moose demanded an apology for Atrios’ implicit argument that Lieberman was endorsing racism, or at least hanging out with known racists, given Joe’s own sterling civil rights record. Steve Gilliard fired back, arguing that Joe is dishonoring his own personal history by hanging out with racists, adducing NR’s recent comments on Katrina as fresh evidence of its racism.These folks are obviously talking past each other, but the exchange does raise some important points about acceptable and unacceptable opposition viewpoints; about history, memory, and forgiveness (or unforgiveness); and about the moral dilemmas involved in appearing in “enemy forums.” More to the point, it raises three questions:1) Is William F. Buckley a racist with whom no self-respecting Democrat should fraternize? By way of full disclosure, I grew up reading National Review and Buckley’s columns and books (along with a lot of other pundits ranging from Frantz Fanon to Joseph de Maistre), and like many people from all points of view, enjoyed his acerbic style of writing and debate on purely aesthetic grounds. (I have also published one article in NR, making the case for a Democratic House win in 1998, along with several election-prediction-and-analysis gigs on their web page, though not recently). That did not mean I agreed with or even found acceptable his underlying political philosphy, but sometimes you just had to LOL.An example (most of WFB’s material is ungooglable, so you’ll just have to trust my prodigious memory for this kind of trivia): On some late -1960s talk show, the actress Shelley Winters (as ubiquitous on the Talks back then as Charo and Monty Rock IV were in later years) was asked why she was a Democrat, and she replied that as a child growing upon in the Depression, “Franklin Roosevelt gave me a hot bowl of soup while Herbert Hoover hated me.” Commented Buckley: “Really, Mr. Hoover was a man of extraordinary foresight.”Another: when Eleanor Roosevelt said she was never under any circumstances cross a picket line, Buckley called on “patriotic citizens to immediately post a 24-hour picket line around Hyde Park.”And still another: during his Conservative Party bid for Mayor of New York in 1965, Buckley was asked what his first action would be if he won. “Demand a recount,” he said.And one more, which is relevant to the current controversy: confronted with claims that open racists were supporting his mayoral candidacy, Buckley said: “Look, you, whoever you are, I don’t want your vote. Go back to your fever swamps and find somewhere else to peddle your nonsense.”On other occasions, Buckley penned extraordinarily eloquent explanations of conservative cultural impulses that are still very relevant today. In an agonized column on his visceral reaction to the post-Vatican II vernacular mass, he wrote that it was like “entering Chartres Cathedral and finding the stained glass replaced by pop art posters of Jesus sitting in against the slumlords of Milwaukee.”Believe it or not, I’m not old enough to have read the late-1950s editorial that Atrios cited–and which managed to shock me, as it would probably shock Joe Lieberman–but I do remember NR’s and Buckley’s various rationalizations for supporting Barry Goldwater’s opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Worse yet, a few years ago I ran across a collection of Buckley columns from the late 1960s that I had bought decades ago which included several about Dr. Martin Luther King. They were not racist according to the commonly accepted definitions of that term, but exhibited a moral obtuseness that is now breathtaking.Yet Buckley later recanted about civil rights, not abjectly or systematically, but still definitively. I distinctly remember a column observing that for African-Americans in a Jim Crow society, the refusal to dignify the laws and political processes that sustained that society was the only true option.The most compelling argument (as The Moose reminded me today) for rejecting the idea that fraternization with Buckley is sinful is the history of his 33-year television show, Firing Line. Buckley’s very first guest was Norman Thomas, the venerable American socialist leader. And that was typical. As one obiturist for the show when it finally expired put it:

”Firing Line” became a necessary stop for the leading liberal figures of the era. Muhammad Ali, Allen Ginsberg, Jesse Jackson, William M. Kunstler and Murray Kempton, among others, all made appearances. Mr. Buckley was helped by close friendships with liberals like Mr. Galbraith and Ira Glasser, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

I vividly remember another show where the guest was then-Congressman Ron Dellems (who’s now mulling a comeback run for mayor of Oakland), who was a national hero for what would now be called Progressive Caucus Democrats. One of Firing Line‘s regular features was a panel of younger politicos, from the U.S. and the U.K., and from the Left and Right, who shared in the questioning and debate; American participants included Mark Green and Michael Kinsley. For decades, the show was Crossfire with a much higher I.Q.; more genuine diversity of opinion; and more actual debate.Now, you can argue that all the liberals and even socialists who hung out with Buckley on the air (much closer than we are to the racist editorial of 1957) were themselves morally obtuse. But it is very clear that treating him like he’s David Duke misses much of why people have paid attention to him and his magazine and television show over the years.If this sounds a bit like the Ezra Pound Defense (an appreciation of the stylist’s contributions trumping his obnoxious views and even his contributions to historic wrongs), so be it. Maybe to young bloggers Buckley is nothing more than one of the original and most extreme architects of the Noise Machine, but back in the day, he was much more, and was acknowledged as such by just about everybody. That’s the point E.J. Dionne was making in his column today about Buckley. Presumably, that’s a lot of what was being celebrated at the dinner Joe Lieberman attended.2) Are there new rules about fraternization with the Right? I suspect some young-and-angry Democratic readers will react to what I’ve said, and what E.J. said, by responding: This is the problem with all you old bastards in Washington. You don’t recognize the enemy when you see him, and you value your insider connections to the enemy so much that you don’t know when he’s cutti
ng your stupid throat.Well, personally, I don’t have that many insider connections to much of anybody; don’t get invited to anybody’s big dinners; and am aware that my own ever-increasing partisanship in the Age of Bush has certainly cooled my casual email relationships with conservatives, including those at National Review. But unless we just want to talk to ourselves, it’s important that we figure out where in the “enemy camp” there’s an openness to actual give-and-take debate. (This was the subject of an open question posed by Markos on August 24, so it’s not just a “centrist” concern). And in my own experience, there are two kinds of Republicans, who cannot be sorted out by ideology: those who would be perfectly happy living in a one-party dictatorship (Karl Rove and most of the White House and RNC staff, Tom DeLay and most House Republicans, Rick Santorum, James Inhofe, Grover Norquist, Jack Abramoff, Ralph Reed, James Dobson, Bill O’Rielly, Britt Hume and much of the Fox News Staff, etc.) and those who would hate to live in a land with no debate or controversy.I’m reasonably sure the National Review folks–and for that matter, those at The Weekly Standard, with the possible exception of the once-reasonable Fred Barnes–fall into the latter category.Hell, National Review named Daniel Patrick Moynihan its Man of the Year in 1975–one year before he took away the Senate seat of William F. Buckley’s brother Jim.And while I’m not going to any dinners celebrating any right-wing publication or personage, I do have to say that engaging conservatives who are willing to engage honestly and on a relatively high plain (both conditions that must be insisted upon) is something progressives should welcome, not deplore.So: have the rules of engagement changed? Yes, but only so far as the Right has changed them. Where they haven’t, we should pick up our intellectual cudgels and have at it, and yes, express a little comity with those relatively few conservatives willing to play by those rules. Eating their food is no big scandal if it gives us the opportunity to eat their lunch.3) Has Joe Lieberman defected to the opposition? This question probably gets to the heart of The Moose’s complaint. He says some of our blogger buddies are engaged in a “McCarthyite attack” on Joe; I don’t agree. But I do think there’s a half-conscious effort to attempt a Zell Millerization of Joe Lieberman. To be clear, I personally am not the adoring Joe fan that I was five years ago; I have lots of issues with what’s he’s said and done since then, especially in terms of the Homeland Security debate, and his original and more recent postures on Iraq. But (and here comes a line I’ve been saving up for a while) I knew Zell Miller and worked with Zell Miller, and Senator Joe Lieberman is no Zell Miller, not by a very long shot. Lieberman votes with and sometimes leads Senate Democrats on a wide variety of issues. He was the loyal running mate of our 2000 candidate, and loyally supported our 2004 candidate. On some issues (e.g., heath care and tax reform), he was arguably the most progressive presidential candidate last year. Reading him out of the party, which a fair number of bloggers have talked about recently because they (sometimes erroneously) suspected him of heresy on this issue or that, makes no sense. If, as some have suggested, he’s too “conservative” to represent a blue state like Connecticut, then the Democratic voters of Connecticut have every opportunity to turn him out. Lieberman’s appearance at the Buckley/NR dinner, which everyone knows represents a personal bond going back to WFB’s endorsement of Joe in his first Senate campaign, is not that different from the decision by his Connecticut colleage, Chris Dodd, to vote against the party line for John Tower’s confirmation as Secretary of Defense back in 1989 (Tower had voted against a Senate censure of Dodd’s father). I don’t recall any big partisan recriminations towards Dodd for supporting a man whose credentials on civil rights and a lot of other subjects were arguably worse that Buckley’s, without all the mitigating circumstances I discussed earlier. It was personal, and everybody respected that. My bottom line is this: let’s all of us de-escalate this controversy, and use it to bring light, not heat, to the many questions it raises.

Michael Crowley over at &c. has drawn attention to a Jonathan Chait column in the L.A. Times this summer that I missed, about George W. Bush’s “creepy” obsession with the exercise habits of his staff. As Crowley points out, this obsession may have something to do with Bush’s close bond with Harriet Miers, who not only helped him clear brush down at the ranch, but has also gone running with her idol on occasion, matching him step for step. I realize that “working out” is something of a bipartisan obsession among young political folk in Washington. I’m constantly amused at twenty-something colleagues who care barely afford to rent a rabbit warren, and who live on reception food and dollar beer specials, but who invariably have expensive gym memberships. “You’re at an age where your body will forgive you anything,” I occasionally say to them. “Junk that monthly gym fee, and you could probably eat lunch more than twice a week, or take the big step up from 3.2 beer to Sierra Nevada.” But in Bush’s White House, the working-out thing seems to be a priority unlimited by age. And this must warm the well-exercised heart of Gary Aldrich, the former FBI agent who penned a tell-all book that focused on the devolution in body-shapes and overall personal grooming between the Bush 41 and Clinton White Houses (a theme similar to the paradise-lost maunderings of Linda Tripp, who also considered the Democratic invasion of the White House something of a Sack of Rome). When Aldrich’s book first appeared, I figured he was just a semi-fascistic outlier who cashed in on the bottomless right-wing appetite for anti-Clinton material. But there seems to be a pattern here: who cares if the White House “works” in Democratic administrations, and doesn’t in Republican administrations; the real question is whether it “works out.”Betcha “Brownie” was a real Spartan.

Last week a sequel appeared to one of the great classics of political analysis–Bill Galston and Elaine Kamarck’s 1989 paper, The Politics of Evasion. The previous report was published by the Progressive Policy Institute; the latest, entitled The Politics of Polarization, by the folks over at the congressionally-focused group Third Way (which is friendly with the DLC, but is a completely independent organiztion). This is a 71-page report chock full of findings and recommendations, so my first suggestion is that you read the whole thing, and don’t rely on the Cliffs Notes version reported in the newspapers, or on the generally carping references to it in much of the blogosphere, based largely, I suspect, on the Cliffs Notes version. Yes, Galston and Kamarck argue that the real gold in American politics is in the ideological center, and they will annoy some of you who think counter-polarization is the key for Democrats. And yes, they claim that Democrats haven’t developed a credible consensus on national security issues, and that will annoy others of you who think a position favoring withdrawal from Iraq will do the trick (for the record, Galston and Kamarck both opposed the invasion of Iraq in the first place).But the real value of the paper is that it hammers home three fundamental realities of contemporary partisan politics that cannot much be denied: (1) the GOP-engineered polarization of the two parties along ideological lines has made Democrats much more dependent than Republicans on sizable margins among self-identified moderate and independent voters (and thus more vulnerable to base/swing conflicts) (2) George W. Bush’s 2004 win was produced as much by persuasion of a sizable minority of moderate voters (particularly married women and Catholics) as it was by mobilization of his conservative “base;” and (3) a changing issues landscape has reinforced the importance of Democratic efforts to deal with chronic negative perceptions by voters on national security and cultural issues–efforts which fell short in 2004.If that sounds familiar to regular readers, it’s because it’s pretty much the lesson the DLC took away from the 2004 elections.Galston and Kamarck place special emphasis on “candidate character” as a significant voting factor for “values voters,” and like many other post-election analysts, think John Kerry was fatally wounded by voter perceptions that he was on both sides of not one but two wars (Vietnam and Iraq). But they also make it clear that Kerry’s problem wasn’t simply inconsistency, but the suspicion that his “real” positions were out of line with mainstream sentiments. In other words, it’s not enough to avoid “flip-flopping;” attention must be paid to the political impact of choosing “flip” over “flop,” or vice-versa. This extremely simple point is one that a lot of Democrats, in an understandable mania for clarity and partisan differentiation, sometimes miss.If I have one criticism of The Politics of Polarization, it’s that it fails to say much about the Democratic opportunity to make enormous gains with “values voters” by drawing attention to the incredible and ever-growing pattern of ethical lapses and dissembling by Bush and the GOP.There is little question that Bush’s current dive in support, particularly from independents, is attributable in no small part to buyer’s remorse among voters who thought he was, if nothing else, a man of simple virtues and basic honesty (we tried to tell them otherwise in 2004, to little avail). And there’s little question the only way Democrats can be sure to benefit from this vulnerability is to support a reform agenda designed to help repair the damage the GOP is inflicting on our institutions and our national interests.Still, there’s plenty of great value in the Galston-Kamarck analysis, including a number of fascinating studies of changing perceptions of the two parties over time. One example: as late as 1986, six years into the “Reagan Revolution,” a comfortable plurality of voters considered Democrats rather than Republicans as the party of “traditional family values.”Like I said: read the whole thing.

One theory of the intra-conservative split over the Harriet Miers nomination is that she’s being sold to conservative evangelical Christians as “one of their own,” with all the carping from elite opinion-leaders on the Right representing a continuation of the much-alleged discrimination against evangelicals, from a different direction.Indeed, there’s been talk, undoubtedly abetted by the White House, that Miers’ appointment represents the establishment of an “evangelical seat” on the Supreme Court, similar to the “Jewish seat” that supposedly existed for much of the twentieth century.Amy Sullivan punctures the idea that Miers is the first evangelical to get nominated to the Court, citing the (then-) evangelical Episcopalian Clarence Thomas, but go back a bit further and you find Southern Baptist Hugo Black, and a significant number of southern Methodists.But in any event, this effort to attach conservative evangelicals to the Miers nomination as a matter of group identity is obviously ironic given the supposed hostility of conservatives to group entitlements. And it’s also casts some new light on the peculiar but characteristic Christian Right conviction that anyone who loves Jesus and reads the Bible will reach the same conclusions about issues like abortion and homosexuality.Lord knows I’ve spilled a lot of ink exploring and criticizing that assumption, and in casting doubt on its accuracy with respect to Miers herself. But it has certainly become a central feature of the Christian Right’s own self-justification for its decisive and spiritually hazardous commitment to partisan politics, and perhaps the White House figured that out in making its own politically hazardous commitment to this nomination.

In my last post, I painstakingly put together an analysis of the religious tradition that Harriet Miers has embraced, concluding that it doesn’t much provide definitive evidence of her probable views on issues like abortion. Imagine my chagrin when I picked up the newspaper the next day to discover that her sometimes boyfriend and fellow parishioner at Valley View Christian Church, the right-wing Texas Supreme Court Justice Nathan Hecht, has been running around telling anybody who would listen that there’s zero doubt about Miers’ views on abortion.In my own long discourse on Miers religious background, I concluded that the nexus between her religion and her judicial philosophy would probably remain a mystery so long as “she and her friends and associates decide to keep it that way.” Well, Hecht would certainly qualify as someone in that inner loop; after all, he’s the one who introduced Miers to Valley View about a quarter century ago, when she, a lapsed Catholic, was seeking a renewed spiritual life.And indeed, Hecht’s assertions seem to be having an effect in some circles. The influential conservative evangelical Marvin Olasky (best known as the coiner of the phrase “compassionate conservatism”) has placed great stock in Hecht’s assurances in his cautiously pro-Miers blog posts. More importantly, the ultimate Christian Right bigfoot, James Dobson, in his bizarre radio remarks yesterday defending his early support for Miers, mentions his friendship with “the man who brought her to the Lord” as one part of the “confidential” information persuading him. This is clearly a reference to Hecht.But is Hecht speaking for himself, for Miers, and for the White House? Well, it’s not like he’s some loose cannon with no insider connections. Karl Rove ran his first campaign for the Texas Supreme Court. He knows the president well enough that W. has bestowed him with one of his famous personal nicknames: “Hector.” It sure looks like he’s on a mission from the administration to help preempt any Christian Right revolt against this nomination.But the weird thing is: it may not be working that well. Yes, the latest C.W. among the chattering classes is that the intra-conservative fight over Miers is one of those Main Street/Country Club fights pitting the GOP’s Christian Right base against snobby elitists who care more about a prospective justice’s legal resume than about her willingness to overturn Roe v. Wade. Indeed, some point to the non-Christians prominent in the conservative opposition to Miers (e.g., David Frum, Bill Kristol) and luridly suggest a big-time Theocon/Neocon split.I don’t think so. Aside from Frum, most of the National Review luminaries (e.g., Rich Lowry, Ramesh Ponnuru) who are prominent in the revolt against Miers are serious Right-to-Life Catholics. Nobody can out-Main Street Phyllis Schlafly, another Miers skeptic. Nobody’s more focused on cultural issues like abortion than Paul Weyrich. Tony Perkins, Dobson’s comrade-in-arms in the Colorado Springs Empire, has been notably neutral on the nomination.And even Dobson himself is expressing doubts and fears on Miers and the abortion issue, noting in the radio address that he will have “the blood of all those babies” on his hands if he guesses wrong about her views.You have to figure at this point that the White House is playing a dangerous double game on Miers, trying to get the word out to the Cultural Right that she’s a sure vote to overturn Roe, without providing any evidence that could blow up on her during the confirmation hearings. The fact that the Cultural Right is split on Miers is an indication this preemptive strategy has failed, which means that conservatives as well as Democrats are going to press her and the White House for clearer answers to their questions.My guess is that “Hector” will now shut up, leaving Rove and company to come up with a new strategy for threading this particular needle. It won’t be easy.