April 25, 2014
The launch of Apollo 11, the first lunar landing mission, on July 16, 1969. (Image: Nasa)
Harvard’s Lawrence Lessig, the crusader for campaign finance reform, feels that his fellow reformers don’t think big or boldly enough to inspire the kind of grassroots campaign that might break elite donors’ stranglehold on America’s political system.
In a recent piece in The Atlantic, Lessig argues that public cynicism about the prospect of deep reform actually working is the only thing keeping widespread outrage at our slide toward plutocracy in check. And he thinks that only a “moonshot” campaign — an ambitious, collective, national effort “unlike anything they’ve seen before” — can “crack this cynicism” and usher in a more democratic system.
BillMoyers.com asked Lessig to lay out his vision of change. Below is a transcript of our discussion that’s been lightly edited for clarity.
Joshua Holland: There’s a cyclical dynamic at work. People are complacent about the issue of money and politics because they think they can’t change it — and that reforms are always designed to protect incumbents — so they don’t put pressure on politicians and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Is that your view?
Lawrence Lessig. (Photo: Dale Robbins)
Yet we don’t do anything about it, because most of us think the system is so entrenched. There was a poll a couple of years ago by the Clarus Group which found that 80 percent of Americans believe that every reform has been for the purpose of entrenching the incumbents, as opposed to actually reforming the system.
Most of us wish we could fly like Superman, but we don’t leap off of tall buildings because we recognize we can’t. And it’s the same thing here. We just have this politics of resignation — a belief that there’s nothing you can do about it, that the rich and powerful will control our politics and that’s the way it will always be.
Holland: But are they wrong? Are they wrong to believe that money is, as they say, “like water” — that it will always find the cracks in the system?
Lessig: I certainly think they’re wrong, to the extent that a different system would produce radically different results.
We got Citizens United and then the entrenchment of super PACs because of something the DC circuit court did in a case called SpeechNow. After that happened, there was an explosion of money into the system that wasn’t there before. Now, if money always finds its way in, regardless of the rules, we wouldn’t have seen that. That money would’ve already been there. The rules changed and the amount of money and the size of the influence of large contributors went up dramatically. So the rules matter dramatically.
We’ve got to begin to recognize this will take a moonshot, and we need to start strategizing around the idea of building a movement that people look at and say, “Yeah, this could really work.”
But I think we need to recognize that Americans are realistic, and they’re not going to rally around a change they don’t believe has any hope of being achieved. So you could either say, “Let’s give up,” or you can say, “What is the kind of change — the kind of strategy — that could actually have an effect?” And how do you convince America of that strategy? That’s ultimately the challenge here.
We’ve got to begin to recognize this will take a moonshot, and we need to start strategizing around the idea of building a movement that people look at and say, “Yeah, this could really work.”
Please go here to continue this interview: http://billmoyers.com/2014/04/25/lawrence-lessig-has-a-moonshot-plan-to-halt-our-slide-toward-plutocracy/.
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