Republic, Lost

Every now and then you stumble onto a book that seems to make sense out of things that made no sense before. "Republic, Lost" by Larry Lessig is one such book.

Lessg claims that there are very few in Congress or the administration who are corrupt in the classic sense of taking bags of money or hiding money in a freezer. He claims that 'corruption' now arises from good people doing rational things within a system that encourages behaviors not in the best interests of America as a whole. Lessig gives lots of examples.

Lessig calls modern corruption the corruption of dependency--the desire, often unconscious, to continue to behave in a certain way in order to continue to receive certain benefits. In politics, Lessig lists Lyndon Johnson as the catalyst for this corruption. Lessig says that President Johnson pushed hard for civil rights legislation (a good thing) and in this pushing alienated Southern white Democrats. The alienation of Southern White Democrats put Congress back in political play because Republicans, for the first time in many years, had a way to gain control of the House of Representatives and the Senate from the Democrats. The Republicans capitalized on this opportunity, raised the appropriate campaign cash to win, and took control.

Then, because control was continually in play, each party had to raise more and more cash to win even a few seats to regain control. Congress went from the Legislating Congress to the Fund Raising congress. The leaders, in each party, were the people who could raise the funds necessary to win and no longer the people who would make the best legislative decisions for the country. The life of a Congressperson became dominated by fund raising with legislating as a hobby. The congresspeople were not corrupt in a traditional sense but needed to focus on fund raising if they wanted to remain as congresspeople. The people who could provide the funding to win were the lobbyists on K street whether they were lobbying for the dairy industry, the sugar industry, the teachers' union, the oil industry, the pharmaceutical industry, or the automotive industry. If you wanted to be re-elected, you had to accept money from these lobbyists. At some later time, you might vote for some legislation that a particular lobbyist desired. There was no direct quid pro quo.

Also, the funder who showed up with the critical million dollars late in a campaign was more likely to be listened to than the citizen who showed up with $1,000 early on.

The exchanges were gifts, not tied to specific legislation, not quid pro quo. But gifts are eventually exchanged in the other direction. Within a particular congressional district, a Congressperson would get more gifts by appealing to the single issue organizations than by appealing to the broad middle. So, pitches to the constituency became more extreme.

Lessig argues in detail that the real world rational dynamics of campaign financing is giving us the government that many are frustrated with. Why should we be proud when a presidential candidate says that it will take $1,000,000,000 in campaign funds to elect the next president, who will then let us down? The need for large campaign war chests however., according to Lessig, compel exactly this result.

At the end, Lessig is great. He proposes fascinating ways to make the system much less dependent on the gift economy. One of his suggestions is to have non-politicians run for multiple offices in a single state with the promise that if the non-politicians clear the primary and the election, they will not occupy the office and will go back to private life. Lessig claims that these candidates,without the need to win, will change the behavior of the politicians so that the system will improve dramatically.

Great book. Here is a review from the New Yorker and another from the New York Times.