To put the point in mildest terms, Ellen Weintraub and Don McGahn do not get along. When they served together on the Federal Election Commission, their mutual hostility was well enough known, and their time apart since Mr. McGahn left the agency does not appear to have eased the tension – – certainly not on Commissioner Weintraub's side, and probably not on Mr. McGahn's. Now Ms. Weintraub has published an op-ed in The Washington Post, arguing on the basis of her experience with Don McGahn that he is not fit to be the next White House Counsel.

How McGahn will perform in his current job might be judged as Commissioner Weintraub suggests, by putting the weight she does on a particular reading of his record at the FEC. Or, on a different view, a distinction could be drawn between Mr. McGahn's past and future roles, and a different standard of evaluation could be adopted for the work now ahead of him. In choosing the first of these alternatives, the Commissioner may be incorrectly framing the question of McGahn's suitability as White House Counsel and directing attention away from what is more relevant in assessing the role and performance of that Counsel in the incoming Administration.

A number of political candidates over the years have recounted the experience of raising too much money, too much of the time, for their campaigns.  They find it awkward and embarrassing to ask for the money, and the pace and intensity of this fundraising consume too much time that could be diverted to more productive uses. They understand the suspicions it raises in those looking on from the outside. Congressman Steve Israel is the most recent to write about experience, and he is a respected elected official whose contribution to this narrative will not be ignored.

Israel is not talking about fundraising events to which tickets are sold, or about appeals on line or in the mail. It is about the person asked for money face to face, or ear to ear: the direct "ask", which will be answered positively, negatively, or somewhere in between.  It is a personal appeal, but one that is managed and strained: the candidate crammed in the cubicle with a phone, staff at his side, reading off notecards with bits of data about the fundraising target on the other end of the line.

Reform theorists worry about the risk in this contact of trading policy for money, or about the dangers of intense association over time with people who have lots of money.  On the conscious level, the politician may be tempted to offer something for cash; on the subconscious level, he simply may come to prefer the company of rich people and identify with their policy objectives and interests.

But it can be more complicated than that.  Gift theorists—not to be confused with reform theorists—tell us that the psychology of giving and receiving is never simple. William Ian Miller has written that “central to the notion of the gift is the way in which reciprocity is effected and enforced,” and this is tricky business, because gift giving and receiving have the potential to “threaten, humiliate, annoy, manipulate, and vex.” William Ian Miller, Humiliation (1993), 21, 23.