Lessig for President
Lawrence Lessig is, without doubt, one of America’s most respected and prestigious intellectuals. His work in the field of adapting intellectual copyright to the realities of a world increasingly defined by the internet, which led to the appearance in 2001 of the Creative Commons license, led to intense research on the nature of political corruption and how to fight it, with financing of parties and candidates being singled out as a key factor.
Lessig lays out his arguments with deceptive simplicity: from the moment that people, entities, or lobbies with certain interests can inject huge amounts of money into a politician’s campaign, the playing field ceases to be level. This may seem obvious, but equality before the law is essential if we want politics to return to its origins, which is to say representing the greater good rather than the interests of the rich and powerful. Basically, reinventing democracy means eliminating the factors that have distorted it into its present shape.
In May 2014, Lawrence Lessig launched Mayday PAC, using crowdfunding to raise more than $11 million to fund a campaign to help Congress reform electoral campaign funding — a campaign to end campaigns — that many people see as the high point of his political activism. But in the run up to the 2016 presidential elections, Lessig has decided to go one step further: he’s decided to run for the Democratic Party nomination on the single platform of approving the Citizens’ Equality Act 2017, and then standing down in favor of his vice president. The law in question is now ready for passage through Congress:
As Lessig himself says, his is not just another campaign: he aims to become the first “referendum candidate”, a campaign in which the candidate is not the focus, but an idea: a president elected on a single issue, and who would stay in office only until that issue is approved by Congress. In other words, as he puts it: “When the system has become the problem, we need an intervention from the outside.”
Needless to say, Lessig is not necessarily expecting to be nominated by the Democratic Party, but instead to do what Democrat Senator Eugene McCarthy managed to do in 1967 with the Vietnam War: to make ending it the central plank of his electoral campaign, thus forcing all other candidates to address the issue. Lessig has proposed raising one million dollars before Labor Day (the first Monday in September), and has set up a campaign, Lessig for President, explaining the plan in careful detail, and using the services of no less a campaign manager than Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. The pair will have their work cut out — with two weeks to go, they have raised more than $469,000 from some 4,387 people — but if they meet their target then Lessig will be able to make the other candidates discuss the issue. This approach to politics could be described as hacking the system: the campaign is not about actually making Larry Lessig president of the United States, but to put reforming the country’s democracy at the top of all candidates’ agendas.
A crazy idea? Perhaps, but Lessig is not the classic “alternative” candidate that we’ve seen on other occasions and in other countries: comedians, clowns, or porn stars looking to ridicule the system or exploit voter unhappiness. Instead, this is an intellectual with a well-thought-out plan based on years of study. We’re talking about a respected person, somebody with a voice that is heard, and who has previously demonstrated his ability to convert ideas into viable plans that can actually bring about change.
In some ways Lessig’s idea is crazy, but he is taking steps toward creating a more level playing field in politics. Sometimes, to bring about real change, in this case a return to the essential principles of democracy means thinking big.
(En español, aquí)
