The hardest question in political law isn’t a case cite or a filing deadline. It’s “Who is the client?” We sit down with Bob Bauer, longtime election lawyer, former Obama White House counsel, and author of The Unraveling, to unpack how that single question drives ethics, privilege, and decision-making at the highest levels of government.

We start with the post-Watergate world that built modern campaign finance regulation: contribution limits, disclosure, the creation of the Federal Election Commission, and public financing for presidential campaigns. From there, Bob explains how political lawyering evolved as campaigns, parties, and presidents learned to operate inside (and sometimes around) those rules, especially as enforcement and norms weaken.

Then we go inside the West Wing. Bob breaks down the difference between serving the president personally, serving the president politically, and serving the presidency as an institution. We talk through privilege and why attorney-client privilege doesn’t attach just because a lawyer is in the room, plus a memorable look at the “long-form” Obama birth certificate moment and what it reveals about role boundaries. We also get Bob’s candid view on DOJ independence, why special counsel investigations tend to fail their promise, and what his work on the bipartisan Supreme Court commission taught him about term limits and reform.

If you care about election law, executive power, Supreme Court reform, or the future of democratic guardrails, this conversation will sharpen how you see the system. Subscribe, share the episode with a friend, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway.

About Bob Bauer

Bob Bauer was General Counsel to President Obama’s 2008 and 2012 presidential election campaigns and then served as White House Counsel to the President from 2009 to 2011. In 2020, he was a senior adviser to the Biden presidential campaign. 

In 2013, President Obama named him to be Co-Chair of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration. In 2021, President Biden named him to be Co-Chair of the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States. 

Today, Bob is Professor of Practice and Distinguished Scholar in Residence at the New York University School of Law and Co-Director of NYU Law’s Legislative and Regulatory Process Clinic. He is faculty Co-Director of NYU Law’s Democracy Project. 

Bob is the author of The Unraveling: Politics without Ethics and Democracy in Crisis (2024). He is also co-author with Jack Goldsmith of After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency (2020), books on federal campaign finance, and numerous articles on law and politics for legal periodicals. Additionally, 
he is co-founder with Jack Goldsmith of a Substack newsletter on issues of presidential power, Executive Functions, and has co-authored numerous bipartisan reports on policy and legal reform.

A Harvard University and University of Virginia School of Law graduate, Bob was a recipient of the American Bar Association’s “Unsung Heroes of American Democracy” award and, in 2025, the recipient with Jack Goldsmith of the Duke Law Bolch Judicial Institute’s Raphael Lemkin Rule of Law Guardian Medal.