Sonia Sotomayor, All-Purpose Candidate

Obama’s choice for the Supreme Court says a lot about his ideology – and it also demonstrates his tactical skills.

There’s hardly a presidential decision as important as choosing a nominee for the Supreme Court. The court is a decisive participant in American politics because the nine justices not only deliver decisions concerning the interpretation of the U.S. Constitution; they also make policies that have important consequences. The fact that American schools had to desegregate is as much the result of a Supreme Court decision as was the decision that George W. Bush had actually won the 2000 presidential election.

Choosing a nominee is an opportunity and also a risk. The president has the opportunity to help determine the political direction of one of Washington’s most powerful bodies, for decades to come, because justices are appointed for life. The risk comes in because the court is so influential that conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats, wage bitter battles about its makeup. Seldom does so much politics surround a single individual.

With Sotomayor’s nomination, Barack Obama has ventured into this political minefield. The President’s choice says a lot about his feel for strategy and tactics. Strategically, Obama is targeting the political center by nominating Sotomayor. The 54-year-old is considered a moderately liberal judge. Her career on the federal bench began in 1992 when she was appointed by the president at the time, George H.W. Bush. Therefore, she won’t represent a radical change to the political makeup of the court and moderate Senate Republicans will have no problem supporting her appointment.

This pragmatism is one of the most notable characteristics of Obama’s governing style. As with his anti-terrorism policies, he is willing to ignore the ideological side of his own party as long as he remains confident he is right and can pick up a few Republican allies along the way. At a time when so many voters describe themselves as “independent,” that’s smart thinking. Pure party ideology means nothing to them.

And at the same time, Obama is demonstrating a refined sense of tactics. His nominee is of Latin-American extraction and Latinos are the fastest growing ethnic voting group in the nation. In several electorally important states, they are the determining voting bloc in presidential elections; Obama himself owes his own victory in no small measure to Latinos. George W. Bush tried wooing Latinos for the Republican Party with his support for immigration reform, a plan that failed because of opposition by hardliners in his own party. Now, Obama will use the Supreme Court to achieve the same goal.