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Alright, fine, let's do this. My knowledge and experience here stems from not quite five years on an agency ethics staff, including advising both civil service and Presidential appointees and their staff on Hatch Act compliance. (Opinions are, as always, mine alone.)
It's true that, as with any set of ethics or anti-corruption rules, details at the margins start to look arbitrary. But the heart of the Hatch Act is about separating the function of (and funding for) governing from the function of (and funding for) campaigning.
A Counselor to the President gets her official title from her governance function. She's paid a salary from the Treasury, which is a public resource. That public resource is not to be used in direct support of or opposition to any particular partisan candidate, party, or group.
Advocating policy is a governance function. Raising money for a candidate, or advocating against particular opposition candidates, is a campaigning function.
The Hatch Act covers a lot more than just political activity like "vote for X". Covered federal employees cannot run for partisan office or solicit contributions for ANY candidate, even off-duty.
The President is specifically excluded from the Hatch Act, because it's arguably impossible to separate the campaign and governance functions. Not so for advisors, campaign chairs, etc.
Now, @obarcala covered a lot of really good points here already:
So I'll point out in particular that the Hatch Act has been challenged on Constitutional grounds before, and been upheld.
And a major concern of Congress in passing the Act was to make sure that an incumbent admnistration didn't get to unfairly use the resources of the gov't to advantage itself in gaining re-election.
That concern is no less important when talking about Presidential advisors paid from the public Treasury than it is when talking about your local mail carrier.
I don't think distinguishing between classes of employees makes sense; Cabinet Secretaries, members of the Executive Office of the President, and rank-and-file civil servants have the same obligation to administer laws and governance without respect to political party.
So it's rational to tell all those employees that they can't use federal resources, time, official influence, or title, to campaign for their preferred candidate.
The Hatch Act also protects federal employees at all levels from being pressured into political work by supervisors, appointees, or even the President. You want machine politics like Chicago is famous for? Getting rid of the Hatch Act could enable that.
As it stands, my boss or the appointees who run my agency can't tell me that I need to lick campaign envelopes or get voters out to the polls as a prerequisite to keeping my job.
I can express my own opinions, outside of work, on my own time, just like anyone else (and some of you may have notices that I do). But I can't ask others to donate or retweet donation requests, even off duty on a purely personal account. That's the balance.
So no, I don't think it's a silly law or that enforcement against Presidential advisors is ridiculous, under any administration. I wish OSC had better enforcement remedies against appointees but that could create other admin law problems.
And I reject categorically that the only people interested in the topic are either ignorant about it or are just partisan hacks.
If that were true, then I hope someone can explain what partisan advantage the Special Counsel hopes to derive from this report when he was nominated by this President to begin with.
