By Shawn Zeller, CQ Staff

Among the many political successes of the Barack Obama campaign was that it kept the frequently restive liberal wing of the Democratic Party unified. That was no accident: Several high-profile liberals — among them 1960s student activist Tom Hayden, actor Danny Glover and author Barbara Ehrenreich — joined forces in a group called Progressives for Obama. Now, however, one of the lead organizers of that group, Bill Fletcher Jr., a senior scholar at the liberal Institute for Policy Studies, is already airing some second thoughts.

The reason: the president-elect’s decision to pick people for his Cabinet and White House staff who have supported the Iraq War.

NOT USUALLY MUTED: United for Peace and Justice, which rallied in New York in March, won’t protest Jan. 20. (GETTY IMAGES \ AFP \ STAN HONDA)

“I’m very concerned,” Fletcher says. “It doesn’t mean I’m ready to abandon ship, but I think those of us who worked hard to support his candidacy need to keep him accountable. There are various forces around him with a different agenda.”

Fletcher isn’t alone in his progressive disenchantment. Leslie Cagan, the national coordinator for the influential anti-war group United for Peace and Justice, also is dismayed by the selections of Rahm Emanuel , who voted in support of the war during his first term as a Chicago congressman, as White House chief of staff and Hillary Rodham Clinton , who voted to authorize the war as a New York senator, as secretary of State.

It’s “unfortunate,” Cagan says, that Obama “has not yet found a way to tap into the talent that is out there around the country who could provide a balance to some of the people he’s brought in there and what they represent.” That’s a far cry from the group’s official response to Obama’s victory, which it hailed as nothing less than “one of the most important days in this nation’s history” and a “reason to be hopeful” for advocates of progressive causes.

In the view of anti-war advocates, the choices of Clinton and Emanuel — and this week’s expected tapping of Robert M. Gates to stay at the Pentagon and former Marine Gen. James L. Jones as national security adviser — fly in the face of Obama campaign rhetoric the liberals hold dear. Several times during the early primaries he declared that he doesn’t “want to just end the war; I want to end the mindset that got us into war.” That statement, combined with his opposition to authorizing the war in 2002, when he was an Illinois state senator, served to win over the pivotal anti-war Democratic voting bloc.

But of the 156 members of Congress who voted “no,” and the “countless other notable individuals who spoke out against” the war, none has been tapped for a top administration job, says Sam Husseini, spokesman for the liberal Institute for Public Accuracy.

Obama’s softening stance on the war isn’t exactly sudden; he put his anti-war rhetoric on the back burner as soon as he sewed up the nomination in June. But his staffing approach now poses a pivotal issue for liberal advocates: Do they want to continue to exist outside the political mainstream or try to effect change from within?

“The key organizational question is: Will anti-war groups move from being a social movement to an interest group? Will they try to be lobbyists when their identities are tied to being protesters?” says Michael T. Heaney, a University of Florida political scientist who studies the anti-war movement. Regarding Obama, he expects that some “are going to want to give him a chance, while the hard core will want to pressure him and pressure him hard.”

Kevin Martin, executive director of Peace Action, launched an e-mail campaign to persuade Obama not to reappoint Gates as Defense secretary. Even so, he expects the new president will have a “long honeymoon” with most liberals, who are holding out hope that the several Clinton administration veterans filling Cabinet and White House posts will behave differently under Obama.

As yet, the groups say they aren’t sure what they’re going to do. Martin expects some protests to commemorate the sixth anniversary of the war’s start come March. But none of the advocates plan inaugural protests.

Rather, Cagan says, those United for Peace and Justice members who attend will seek to have their voices heard in a "positive way" that won't "be just limited to an anti-war message." Instead, some anti-war advocates will focus their attention on promoting a health care overhaul or efforts to curb global warming. Cagan says: "We're going to say: 'We too believe in change. Here's the change that we want.' "