David Frum’s thoughts about Super PACs are a useful reminder that not all the objections to these PACs are the same, not all fall within the usual range of complaints about bought-and-sold government or deepening political inequality.  Frum suggests that PACs may be victimizing donors and suffering abuse at the hands of their consultants, and that candidates, behind claims of independence, can and do disclaim all responsibility for these organizations’ behavior.  This is a set of concerns a few steps removed from the once dominant worry that these PACs would swing elections.

This perspective opens up a discussion of whether Super PACs can be brought within reasonable regulation, to deal with specific problems, without limiting the goal to the difficult and contested one of limiting independent spending.  The choice is between a hunt for anti-coordination strategies, which is essentially the hope to undo the Buckley guarantees for independent expenditures, and developing more conventional rules to account for the emergence of these PACs and the gaps in the regulatory system within which they are operating.

The Federal Election Commission has not solved the “Super PAC problem,” but then again the Commissioners cannot agree on what the problem is. Others outside the agency are divided in this same way. A number of questions in contemporary campaign finance are like that. Because positions are passionately held, each side is convinced that the other is not merely mistaken but dead wrong, maybe also ill-motivated. Given the chance, proponents and opponents of new rules would like to win however they can.

So there is the hope that the Supreme Court can be shifted by a vote toward a more favorable judgment on congressional power to control campaign finance. And proposals are made to strengthen the FEC for a more decisive role. The Brennan Center suggests that the FEC could make strides in the direction if it could be restructured to a) bring an element of nonpartisanship into the choice of Commissioners, by assuring that at least one is unaffiliated with a party and b) add an additional Commissioner to the total to get to an odd number and avoid deadlocks. The changes would supposedly work together to make good decisions: the odd number of Commissions guarantees decision, and the provision for nonpartisanship improves the chance that the decision will be a good one. To secure this ingredient of nonpartisanship, the Brennan Center suggests a “blue ribbon advisory panel” to recommend nominees for consideration by the President.

The goal of a decision is different from the goal of a good decision and so, in this respect, an odd number of Commissioners only gets us so far. And no one has yet defined how “blue ribbon” recommendations of Commissioners, or the requirement that one or more of them be unaffiliated with any political party, will achieve a particular reform objective.  “Nonpartisan” Commissioners will not be without opinions; they will hold views that inform their regulatory positions, just as there are independents who reliably identify with one party or the other.

The agreement apparently reached on the omnibus omits some campaign finance related items but includes others.  The party coordinated spending limits remain in place, while there are provisions blocking IRS and SEC action in the next year to promulgate political spending disclosure rules. For reformers, the results are decidedly mixed, and they are both relieved and exasperated.  And for them and all others, there is also the question of whether this development suggests anything else about the choices faced in the reform debate.

The Campaign Legal Center was pleased that the Federal Election Commission had fined the independent Romney Super PAC for republishing a Romney campaign video, but it was disappointed that the penalty, $50,000, was low.  Still, there was enforcement, as my colleague Marc Elias pointed out on Twitter.

It is a mixed triumph for the FEC.  The agency got its settlement and collected a fine but also agreed with the Romney Super PAC that the law being applied had been unsettled and that PAC counsel had adopted a reasonable legal position in the absence of a clear rule or established interpretation.

Maybe the agency was being circumspect, paying its respects to the Romney PAC legal position as needed to induce a negotiated settlement.  But the public record now contains an enforcement action in which the agency imposed a penalty for what it characterized as a reasonable legal position on an open question under the law.

FEC Chair Ravel is not the first former or present Commissioner to turn to Comedy Central to lampoon her own agency.  Trevor Potter, once also a Chair, came to run a major reform organization that collaborated on bits of high comedy with Stephen Colbert. He even would emerge for his performance in a shower of dollars from something called the Mazda Scandal Booth. But he was out of the agency then and Ms. Ravel is still running it, and she decided that she had had enough of the FEC’s dysfunction and would play it for laughs. One of her colleagues was not amused.

Chair Ravel defended her appearance as free speech and as the only way now, all else having failed, to make her point. The problem for the FEC in any resort to high comedy is that the audience may misunderstand the joke. It is not a far cry from laughing at the agency to laughing at the law and concluding that politicians will never make or enforce rules against their own interest. The same ridicule can and has been directed at reform proposals.

The quips at the FEC’s expense depend on clever bits of exaggeration and oversimplification that, in the best humor, expose some measure of truth. The tricky part is keeping the exaggeration under control so that it does not overwhelm the routine and strike a false note. Does the audience come away both entertained and better informed, or at risk of being misled?