Democratic SuperPACs and the dark future of campaign finance.

Politico posted an article late last night detailing efforts by the two seniormost democrats in each legislative chamber to raise money for left-leaning 'SuperPACs", and this morning prompted a discussion in its daily "Arena" feature, debating whether or not it is "hypocritical for [democrats to use] the (legal) fundraising tactics they recently shunned." I tend towards agreement with the general consensus that seems to be emerging over at Politico, that the democrats have to win elections before they can reasonably expect to change the rules, but much more cautiously and begrudgingly than most, for reasons outlined below.

It is very easy to decry the outsized role of money in the American political system when that money is being funneled primarily towards one's opponents. Indeed, it should come as no surprise that campaign finance reform has generally been pushed by democrats, when one considers how regularly they are outspent by their republican counterparts who court massive contributions from wealthy-business interests. Once that tide begins to shift, however, the need for changes becomes less and less pronounced. As long as the "right team" continues to win elections and solve those problems, the actual deleterious effect of money on the system (the motivator for reform) begins to recede from the view of those who previously felt unfairly underrepresented. Additionally, there are always other, more pressing issues at hand to be resolved; political capital being finite, legislators will prioritize solving these issues they predict will define the next election, rather than risk failing to move on these issues by instead focusing on reforms that, even absent any political failures, could jeopardize their incumbency advantages for re-election.

One needs to look no further than the Obama campaign and subsequent administration to see this in action. After abandoning public funding in the general election, the President has given given only perfunctory support to substantial reform, and is now courting traditional big-money donors (even from among the "fat cats" of Wall Street). It's very easy to cite this as an example of "power corrupts," and leave it at that before moving on the next false messiah (and in the specific case of President Obama, I might be inclined to agree). Without developing a more specific and nuanced understanding of how that corruption actually occurs, though, proponents of real campaign finance reform can never develop a meaningful political strategy for preventing it from occurring in the next cycle.

Spying for foreign countries is totally cool*

*As long as said country is the United States.

I understand that Pakistan is mind-numbingly dysfunctional. I agree that we should probably stop handing giants burlap sacks with dollar signs on them to people who almost certainly support America's enemies. But are we actually going to criticize Pakistan for punishing people who spy on behalf of a supposed ally, even when we do the exact same thing?

Democrats are Stupid

For the life of me, I cannot understand why senior House democrats such as Nancy Pelosi decided to publicly call for Rep. Anthony Weiner's resignation over the weekend. As I see it, there are two possible reasons why the democrats may have wanted to see Weiner resign at all: A. They in fact found his conduct so appalling as to require a penance, or more likely B. they were concerned that his continued presence in the house would keep the story alive and hurt the party politically. The first option is so implausible as to merit no discussion, but the second justification is actually even dumber. Quite to the contrary of their ostensible intent, Pelosi et al. calling for Weiner's resignation helped to fuel the story.

Print media like the Washington Post and Roll Call gave front page real estate to the senior democrats who wanted to publicly lambaste Rep. Weiner. Online outlets such as Politico gave it top-of-the page billing when it first broke. Democrats turning on each other is a story unto itself, even if it fits within a larger story about some particular scandal. Maybe these public admonitions wouldn't have fed the fire quite so much had they been made a week earlier, while the story was getting top billing anyways, but waiting for the story to settle down a little bit before coming out just restarts the whole frenzy.

Additionally, coming out at all opens up the democrats to the charges of hypocrisy that have played out among the the punditry, comparing this to Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky. That's a silly comparison, since the resignation of the President is much more disruptive to the nation than that of a congressman who doesn't even hold a leadership position, but it's also an obvious one that could have easily been avoided by keeping these calls for Weiner's resignation private. I of course don't mind seeing the democrats shoot themselves in the foot, but I would prefer to see it come through something more interesting than this amateurism.

UPDATE: The White House has been forced to weigh in, with Press Secretary Jay Carney calling the episode "a distraction" while refusing to call for Weiner's resignation. Currently, Politico notes this as the latest post from one of the blogs on its sidebar, while the New York Times doesn't seem to have anything at all on it. Had the House democrats taken this same low key approach, you can bet they would have merited the same (lack of) coverage.

Meanwhile, Eric Cantor clearly smells blood in the water.

What Trump (kinda sorta) had right

Today's news of OPEC's failure to reach consensus on new production quotas reminds me of one of the more popular news clips used to disparage Donald Trump's supposed flirtation with a Presidential run. In it, Trump claimed he would simply demand that Saudi Arabia raise oil production to help us lower gas prices; when pressed as to what leverage he might use to attain such a result, Trump simply asserted that he would get what he wanted.

Now, far be it from me to defend Donald Trump's mockery of the political process (or satire, depending on how one views things), but embedded in that word salad of narcissistic cliché was a point, even if one Trump accidentally stumbled upon. The United States currently provides substantial arms and/or security guarantees to the Saudis, as well as other OPEC members Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (and, obviously, Iraq, though that's a different relationship). The U.S. also has smaller-scale deals with other OPEC members such as Algeria, who last year announced a plan to start focusing more on Russian purchases. U.S. arms and personnel provide the regional stability needed by roughly half of OPEC to operate, and people want to imply there is nothing we can do to influence their policies? What, then, is even the point of providing that security, if not to coerce higher oil production figures in order to subsidize or consumption habits?

Luckily, though, even if we are't willing to apply this leverage (publicly, anyways), our Middle Eastern allies seem to get the point. The 4 Gulf states mentioned above were the ones who supported higher production quotas, and in fact have already been operating well above the current quotas for some time. Even if Americans and our leaders are unwilling to be realists about our interests, it seems like states who share our interests still can be.

Austan Goolsbee to depart

Bloomberg broke the news of Mr. Goolsbee's impending departure from the Obama administration. Some commentators are chalking this up to the common concern academics in government have, of being stripped of tenure for taking too long a leave. I don't mean to single out Mr. Goolsbee at all here, but that is nonsense. He is already well beyond the 1 year of leave outlined in the Chicago faculty handbook, and even if the University of Chicago were in fact shortsighted enough to fire one of their most prolific professors for staying with the administration through an entire term, what school (or business) wouldn't immediately hire him?

The simple fact is, working for the government sucks. The pay is relatively low (Goolsbee's salary in his last year at Chicago was more than double what he makes in government) while the stress is insanely high (while I always enjoyed Mr. Goolsbee's appearances on media programs, he was always there to take flak on the President's behalf). Almost no one lasts a full 4-year term; it's just not just academics like Goolsbee and Summers, but also guys like Orszag and Emanuel who have no other employer they need to get back to.