A cleanup plan for D.C.
In 2008, when Lawrence Lessig was considering a run for Congress in California, the famed political strategist Joe Trippi agreed to run his campaign — on one condition. “He said, ‘You’ve got to promise me one thing,’” Lessig, now Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, recalled. “‘That you will get on the telephone for two to four hours every single day, between now and the day you decide you no longer want to be in government, and call people you’ve never met to ask them for money.’” The decision was an easy one. When faced with the hard reality of America’s money-driven campaign system, Lessig — like an increasing number of Americans — opted out. Despite a few infamous examples to the contrary, politicians themselves aren’t the problem, he says. Rather, what we’re witnessing is “not a corruption of the people within the institution, but a corruption of the institution itself,”...