Hello and welcome to the Slate Political GabFest.

It's Wednesday the 13th of October, and we are live at the 92nd Street Y in Tribeca.

And before we get the rundown of the show, we have to prove that we're live.

And so before us sits a bunch of people who will hopefully now...

That was great.

We could lead them in song.

Our first topic will be money in politics and the extraordinary amount of money being spent in this presidential race.

Huh, in this, it feels like a presidential race, in this off-year election, and whether that's distorting our democracy or stealing it, as the Democrats would tell you.

And then we're going to talk about the Obama presidency and an amazing story by Peter Baker

that's going to appear in the New York Times Magazine this weekend. It's already online.

It's a look back and I look forward to Obama 2.0 and the president's thoughts on that.

And then we're going to end by talking about waiting for Superman, the documentary about the American educational system.

And then we will have cocktail chatter, and that's the rundown.

So let's start, Emily, on this question of money.

First, there have been so many claims and counterclaims about how this election is different and shady groups and cronies and nefarious characters.

What is new and what is something we've already had before us in this election?

So I spent the afternoon trying to sort this out buried in, you know, the IRS tax code and the 527s and 501, all the choices.

And essentially, before Citizens United, which is the Supreme Court's campaign finance decision

from June, which has gotten so much attention, there was this earlier decision called Wisconsin

Right to Life. And that's where we get the whole idea of issue ads, these ads that outside groups can put

up in which they claim and sometimes are just educating you about an issue, but they often

can seem as if there's a not very hidden political agenda.

...