John Samples Lauds Everybody's Favorite FEC Commissioner

Here, in the American Spectator.

BTW, Smith really is - or until his recent return to academia, was - everybody's favorite Federal Election Commission Commissioner, even of those who ostensibly hate him, such as John McCain, Fred Wertheimer - the most naive man in America - and the rest of the reform lobby, as Bob Bauer pointed out here. ("If FEC Commissioner Brad Smith did not exist, members of the reform community would work hard to invent him. They disdain his point of view, of course, and wish that they could replace it on the Commission with an approved version. Yet he has his uses, too: when Commissioner Smith raises issues he cares about, it has become standard reform debate technique to divert attention from the merits with an attack on Smith’s person and his motives.")