Behind the Cover Story: Robert Draper on How Democrats Finally Embraced Super PACs Robert Draper, a contributing writer for the magazine, wrote this week's cover story on Priorities USA Action, a super PAC that produces attack ads directed at Mitt Romney. Draper's most recent book, "Do Not Ask What Good We Do," is about Congress; his last article for the magazine was about Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. How did this article on Democratic super PACs come about? The editors of the magazine and I had been chewing on the question of how to do a human-driven super-PAC story. I tend to gravitate toward the experiential aspect of a topic: how a president's B.F.F. (Valerie Jarrett) exerts her influence in the White House; how the operation of a political rogue (Sarah Palin) functions; what it's like to be the guy whose job it is to bring the House's Tea Party freshmen in line (Kevin McCarthy). In this case, I decided it would be interesting to show how Democrats slowly shed their (professed) disdain of big-money politics and embraced the world of super PACs - and to do this by showing how two novices to that world, Bill Burton and Sean Sweeney, built theirs from the ground up and then endeavored to sell it to a not-so-waiting world. You write about a couple, the Mostyns, who welcome Priorities USA Action. But what's the most common reason people say no to a super PAC? There are four. In no particular order: 1) The belief that Obama can't possibly lose to Romney (this reason began to dissipate after the antics of the G.O.P. primaries were concluded). 2) The belief that the Obama campaign organization would be raising all the money it would need anyway. 3) Disillusionment with the president vis-à-vis progressive ideals and naïveté about the G.O.P. as willing legislative partners. 4) A basic distaste for super PACs and the attack ads they fund. Obama openly shares that distaste. Do you think that Bill Burton, who helped found the Priorities super PAC after working in the White House, also felt this way? Burton was pretty candid on the subject. Sure, he said, it's a lousy system and ought to be reformed. But to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld - and Burton did exactly that - you go with the rules you have, not the rules you wish you had. I don't think he and Sweeney spend a minute of their day fretting about the amorality of the world in which they operate. Were you surprised by how super-PAC people rationalize their work? In the world of presidential campaigning, you really can't luxuriate in self-doubt or navel-gazing. Things move too quickly, and day-to-day battles are waged. I guess what continues to surprise me is how quotidian it has become to attack-attack-attack, and how nearly everything is fair game for ridicule. That, and the fact that we're in a recession, with millions of people out of work, and yet upward of a billion dollars will be spent in this election simply to fill the airwaves with invective. These are not original thoughts, I realize. What impressed the Mostyns most, it seemed, was that Priorities found workers who could blame Bain for losing their jobs. How did they find those folks? Basically, their researcher Brennan Bilberry behaved like a good reporter. He read every news item from the "90s pertaining to employees who were laid off by Bain. He located those people, talked to them by phone, got their stories and ascertained whether they'd be willing to share said stories in an attack ad. Then another person was sent to interview the Bain victims in person. Does Priorities USA Action have another strategy in mind, or is Attack Bain plan A, B and C, with no plan D? They're constantly poll-testing themes and angles, and it's possible that some new leitmotif worthy of exploitation will emerge - for example, when Governor Romney announces his running mate. The reality, however, is that Priorities doesn't have enough money to heave against the wall to see what sticks. They've pretty much got to hone what they have and take dead aim with it.