Campaigning by Leading

Time's Karen Tumulty reports:

Senator Dodd's campaign communications director Hari Sevugan tells me that $150,000 in small contributions have poured into Dodd's campaign in the past 24 hours, since his announcement that he will put a hold on--and may even filibuster--a foreign intelligence surveillance bill approved yesterday by the Senate Intelligence Committee. Dodd objects to a provision that would grant immunity to the telecommunications companies that turned over their customers' phone and e-mail records to the government's warrantless surveillance program. The companies have been hit with 40 pending lawsuits charging them with privacy violation.

Dodd has raised more small-dollar contributions in the last 24 hours than he did in the previous month. Sevugan also says the number of visits to his website is up tenfold, as is the number of people registering their e-mail addresses there.

The response Dodd is getting doesn't surprise me at all. What does surprise me is that we haven't seen more of this. I've often heard political commentators argue that serving members of Congress are at a disadvantage when running for president because they can be forced to make difficult votes that they then have to explain on the campaign trail. There's some truth to this, particularly when the candidate is serving in the minority party, as John Kerry, John Edwards, and Dick Gephardt were in 2003.

But when a candidate is in the majority party, being a serving member of Congress really should be an advantage. In addition to issuing holds and filibustering, which any Senator can do, members of the majority can hold hearings on topics of their choice, they can introduce bills that will actually come up for a vote, and they can even launch investigations and issue subpoenas.

There's really no excuse for Clinton, Obama, Biden, and Dodd to be campaigning in the same way Edwards and Richardson are. Actual leadership is always more impressive than talking about leadership. If candidates like Obama, Biden, and Dodd want to distinguish themselves in the eyes of primary voters, they should be thinking of ways to do something constructive in Congress. Dodd did that yesterday and he is being rewarded for it. The positive publicity, good will, and campaign cash he generated by actually doing something in the Senate far exceeds anything he could have acheived by attending campaign events in Iowa or New Hampshire. There's an obvious lesson to be learned here. If Barack Obama or Joe Biden or even Hillary Clinton want to boost their campaigns, they should start thinking about what they can accomplish at their day job.