The White House has unveiled its plans for the Federal Election Commission and David Mason is not in them.   Hans von Spakovsky did make the cut, and he shares the Republican list with two party lawyers, Don McGahn and Caroline Hunter.  Democrats would keep Steve Walther and add Cynthia Bauerly; Ellen Weintraub would hold over.  It appears, but it is not confirmed, that the nominees would be considered one by one, with a vote on each, and the Republicans will have to put up their last stand for von Spakovsky.

     Von Spakovsky still in; Mason now out.  It is not hard, on these facts, to make out the politics.  Republicans have lined up behind von Spakovsky, unwilling to give in to the Democratic critique of his Justice Department years.  Mason, if he speaks on the subject, may say otherwise, but Republicans have seemingly lined up against him.
 
     If Mason gave offense, it was the result of his challenge to Senator McCain over the latter's unilateral withdrawal from the primary matching fund system.  It was an irritant at the time, and it would have been an irritant in the future when a reconstituted FEC will have to decide, with enough Commissioners reporting for duty, whether to pursue enforcement action against McCain.  By dropping Mason, the Republicans improved their defense of McCain.  Mason, the critic, is one vote that Republicans will no longer have to worry about.  And however he would have voted in the end--and Mason might well have eventually found in favor of McCain--his continued involvement in the debate would have been awkward for the Republican side.  Some will conclude also that Mason's sudden disappearance from the stage is a message about the limits of regulatory and intellectual independence.

     These are the probable reasons for the curtain falling on the Mason years.  The reason for the White House to act now is to restore the FEC to full voting power, which is not usually a Republican priority but now serves the immediate need of giving Senator McCain the most direct, statutorily routine access to public funding for the general election.  In this one move, the White House ended McCain's accountability for his use or abuse of the primary public financing system while putting him in position to take money for the general. 

     For this maneuver to have been arranged for the benefit of Senator McCain, of all people--the John McCain who has regularly, severely criticized the FEC as a "corrupt" agency--is a remarkable turn in his career as a reformer.  A Commissioner who acted to enforce the law, to just raise an important question of enforcement, has been stripped of his post.  This was clearly in Senator McCain's interest, this raw power play.  It is also in his interest to have the FEC, back in business minus Mason, arrange for his money for the fall campaign. 

     It is inconceivable that McCain was not informed of the plan.  In fact, it is highly probable that he was in involved in its formulation or its approval.  In the days ahead it will be seen whether he will be asked about his role.

     It is an obvious question and a fair one.  This development at the FEC, after all, is one of a kind.  For all the time that McCain has savaged the performance of the FEC, he has led the sizeable crowd of critics who believed that the agency is too beholden, on the whole, to the narrow interests of parties and their candidates.  Yesterday, Republicans could not have acted more narrowly in just this vein:  effectively firing a Commissioner to immunize their Presidential nominee from enforcement action in a pending case but making sure that there is enough of an agency left to get him the money needed to finance his campaign. 

Bob Bauer