Washington Examiner's Charlie Spierling today takes issue with our statements that Elena Kagan “is not and was not a radical or socialist; her thesis explored historical questions about socialism.” He does so by cherry-picking two paragraphs from the thesis that do not indicate she was a socialist or radical. In one, she writes that her brother's “involvement in radical causes led me to explore the history of American radicalism in the hope of clarifying my own political ideas”; in the other she discusses how sectionalist has often led to the failure of American radicalism.

But that's not the stupidest part of Spierling's post. No, the stupidest part is where he attempts to draw a parallel between Kagan's thesis and that of Virginia governor Bob McDonnell:

As blogger Soren Dayton writes, “I guess that all the Dems who attacked the McDonnell thesis are now saying Kagan's is irrelevant.”

Kagan and McDonnell both wrote theses. Other than that, the cases are simply not comparable.

First of all, McDonnell wrote his thesis as a 34-year-old graduate student, two years before he first ran for state representative. Kagan wrote her thesis as a 21-year-old college senior. As the conservative blogger Allahpundit noted in disregarding attacks on Michelle Obama's college thesis, such criticisms “invite you to treat someone's college thesis as though it's a Rosetta Stone (or Rosebud) to their entire mentality. More than that, for it to be relevant you have to believe they haven't evolved/matured politically at all since college.”

Moreover, McDonnell's thesis was clearly intended as a prospective party platform for the GOP. Titled “The Republican Party's Vision For The Family: The Compelling Issue Of The Decade,” the thesis argued that “Republicans must stay consistently committed to their principles, communicate more effectively with the American public, and take bold action to restore the family to a position of strength in modern society.”

When the Washington Post first reported on McDonnell's thesis, it led to an uproar because among the “bold action[s]” proposed by McDonnell was a recommendation to ensure that “government policy should favor married couples over 'cohabitators, homosexuals or fornicators.'” McDonnell also cites “feminism” as among the “real enemies of the traditional family,” and “described as 'illogical' a 1972 Supreme Court decision legalizing the use of contraception by unmarried couples.”

In short, the McDonnell thesis is prescriptive. It lists specific policies the Republican Party should put into their platform and seek to implement, and gives tips on how they can sell those policies to the American people. Moreover, according to the Post, "[d]uring his 14 years in the General Assembly, McDonnell pursued at least 10 of the policy goals he laid out in that research paper."

The Kagan thesis does none of those things. It simply discusses the rise and fall of socialism in New York City in the early 20th century, with a particular emphasis on why the movement collapsed. And according to Kagan's thesis advisor and her college peers, she was not a socialist while she was writing the thesis and is not one now. There's no evidence that Kagan has attempted to carry out “socialist” policies during her career of government service.

Other than that, the theses are exactly the same.