Today’s Wall Street Journal has an interesting article indicating that President Obama’s selection of Elena Kagan ought to undermine his efforts to demagogue the Supreme Court’s campaign-finance ruling in Citizens United. Some excerpts:

Ms. Kagan chose September’s blockbuster campaign-finance case “as her very first case to argue before the court,” Mr. Obama said Monday. “I think it says a great deal about her commitment to protect our fundamental rights, because in a democracy, powerful interests must not be allowed to drown out the voices of ordinary citizens.”
But based on her arguments in the case and her writings on the subject, it isn’t clear Ms. Kagan hews to that rationale for spending limits.
In arguing the case, known as Citizens United, she distanced herself from that logic. Rather than embrace a 1990 precedent [Austin] that upheld similar limits, intended to stop corporations from “distorting” the political process with their wealth, she made other arguments.…
Richard Hasen, an election law specialist at Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, who supported the voided law in Citizens United, said Ms. Kagan’s gambit failed because it let Chief Justice Roberts off the hook.
Since the government itself wasn’t championing the original Austin rationale in its arguments, Mr. Hasen said, the court looked less favorably on the precedent.…
Strategy aside, it isn’t clear whether Ms. Kagan holds to the specific principle behind the Austin decision. Mr. Hasen noted that in a 1996 law review article, Ms. Kagan criticized the decision. The court, she wrote, tried to justify the limits on corporate spending “principally on the ground that corporate wealth derives from privileges bestowed on corporations by the government. But this argument fails, because individual wealth also derives from governmental action.”
Therefore, Mr. Hasen said, it is hard to determine precisely what Ms. Kagan believes about campaign finance regulations that Mr. Obama sees as so essential.