Lawrence Lessig Wants To Run For President So He Can Resign

An anonymous reader writes: Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig has announced his intention to explore a bid for the U.S. presidency. By Labor Day, he will decide whether he has the support necessary to enter the Democratic primary. His goals are rather unusual — he says, "I want to run to be a different kind of president. 'Different' not in the traditional political puffery sense of that term. 'Different,' quite literally. I want to run to build a mandate for the fundamental change that our democracy desperately needs. Once that is passed, I would resign, and the elected Vice President would become President."

His top picks for a running mate include Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Lessig calls it a "Presidency as referendum," a hack for the U.S. Constitution to give more power back to the citizens. "In no plausible sense do we have a representative democracy in America today." In an interview with the Washington Post, Lessig added, "Until we find a way to fix the rigged system, none of the other things that people talk about doing are going to be possible."

Comments

Showed too much of his hand

[sh00z]

So, he's announcing a priori that he'll be a lame duck. Chances of Congress cooperating with him: 0.01%

Re:Showed too much of his hand

[Austerity Empowers]

Except that the most powerful man in the world doesn't usually resign, even in a democracy.

Re:Showed too much of his hand

[IMightB]

Or pass a law saying that corps are not people, need to act somewhat responsibly and only have rights/privileges specifically granted to them.

Re:Showed too much of his hand

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Or pass a law saying that corps are not people, need to act somewhat responsibly and only have rights/privileges specifically granted to them.

God damn it, this meme just won't die!

The Supreme Court opinion exicity pointed out this "corporate right" to free speech was not due to corporation-as-person, but derived from the right of people who are the corporation, who take their speech rights with them.

In short, Congress cannot define a group of people, and require people to give up their right to speech when joining it, to take advantage of that group's provided features.

As for money itself, 80% of political donation goes to advertising, and that is "the press" in the first amendment -- literally the modern version of a printing press, the means of mass-producing speech for distribution. Kings can and did restrict printing presses to backdoor censor. "The Press" isn't just a guy with a notepad, a more modern addition to the concept of "freedom of the press".

Money buys mass production of speech. To restrict this is to violate this old notion that the king cannot restrict mass production of speech.

And the court has also ruled that ensuring equality of quantity of political speech (loosely correlated with equal money) was also "wholely foreign to the First Amendment."

Re:Showed too much of his hand

[dywolf]

then let them spend their own money to buy candidates, not the corporation's.

they cannot both have the legal shield of the corporation separating them into distinct legal entities when it suits them, and ignore it when it doesn't.

Shifting election day

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> shift election day to a national holiday

I'd love to. How about April 15 when the feeling of just having paid our taxes is fresh?

big words

[fche]

"fundamental change that our democracy desperately needs"

Hold onto your wallets and run for the hills.

Re:big words

[Anonymous Coward]

I am holding onto my wallet, I'm trying to keep the millionaires and billionaires out of it!

the worst summary for the worst proposal.

[nimbius]

I want to run to build a mandate for the fundamental change that our democracy desperately needs.

so you want to propose a mission statement? because as it stands 100 senators and 435 house representatives are and have been for more than 2 generations the "hack" used by oligarchs and plutocrats to ensure you dont get to just randomly pull the rug out from under them. They control the media, they control the message, and they ultimately decide what policies and procedures are adopted and enforced.

presidents dont make laws or set meaningful policy. they kiss babies, tour disaster areas, deliver platitudes, and offer a meaningful physical representation of a broad set of policies economic, social, and international that campaign donors can patronize and the average voter can gloss over until they have to juggle 2 jobs and a trip to the library to cast their vote for party A or party B before they pick up the kids and pay rent.

Re:the worst summary for the worst proposal.

[DarkOx]

That is the realy problem with the American system since FDR appeared on the scene and maybe even going back a little before that.

Presidents do set policy lots of it. Congress has abdicated responsibility over and over again and handed executive agency broad rule making powers. You can't take those powers back once you give them up either because the President has his veto pen. We gave the president the power to commit military forces without a vote. Its hard to say nope you can't run your war after he has been doing it for two months. What would Congress refuse to allow a covered retreat? Can't happen not really. The budget is two big and the president has to great a discretionary authority all ready to make shutdowns or default threats effective. Obama as your will recall pretty much threatened to make the House of Representatives a moot body and just issue a trillion dollar coin on the Treasury Departments executive authority. Essentially we have allowed the President to be above the law.

Lessig is right about the need to dismantle the two party system but that isn't the first step. In fact if you make that the fist step the consequences will likely be disastrous. It would dilute the 'will' of the Legislative branch even further. Only a near unified legislature can resist the presidency as it is. If we go multiparty now we almost certainly will end up with a President becoming a dictator we can never get rid of. Step one is a castrate the office of the President. We need to pass laws returning power to the Legislature, removing rule making authorities, removing standing authorizations, an "opposition" party that controls the legislature at odds with the sitting President is the only way that can happen.

We need more polarization not less. We need to build up a level of hostility that will cause a legislature to grit their teeth and say "We are gonna break this President" consequences be damned. After that you can begin trying to weaken the mechanisms that let those people stay in power.

     

Re:Socialism

[The Real Dr John]

You are talking about communism, not democratic socialism like in parts of Europe. In fact, you can't have free market capitalism without restrictions on money in politics, and still have any kind of democracy.

Non biased?

[argStyopa]

Yeah, sure: he only wants radical leftists as 'running mates'.

Fuck you Larry for marginalizing what's otherwise a reasonably non partisan position on the 'brokenness' of government.

Of course, the last time someone tried attacking the machine, the Left Wing, the Media, and the "bosses" of the Right decided that none of them wanted such a message to succeed, so they cheerfully and successfully painted the Tea Party as right wing, racist, radicals.

Re:Non biased?

[PopeRatzo]

radical leftists

You wouldn't know a "radical leftist" if one blew off an M-80 in your underpants. Your concept of what makes for a "radical leftist" is a complete fabrication of Fox News and professional propagandists like Mark Levin.

There isn't a single "radical leftist" anywhere on the US political stage. You'll know if one shows up when you pick up and newspaper and find out about his assassination by a "lone wolf" or his death in a plane crash.

Re:Non biased?

[PraiseBob]

Yeah, sure: he only wants radical leftists as 'running mates'.

they cheerfully and successfully painted the Tea Party as right wing, racist, radicals

A fairly large certain percentage of left wingers and right wingers agree that the govt is broken. The centrist response is to keep the status quo. The left wing response is to blame money in politics as having undue influence, hurting democracy and turning it into an oligarchy, and the fix is to limit money, and impose higher taxes on the super wealthy to try to create a more balanced society. The right wing response is to blame government for being bad at governing, and the solution is to dismantle the government, in particular using the starve the beast methodology, to cripple the power the government has by limiting money, and reducing taxes.

The tea party, so named after an anti-tax movement, has as its core ideology, the idea of lowering taxes and preventing government from functioning. That is a radical idea- that govt works best when it is completely broken and can't act at all. This naturally would create a power vacuum where corporations and oligarchs would gain power. I don't understand how the solution to a broken government is to break it more? It's an irrational platform, designed at its very core to shift power into the hands of unelected power brokers. Needless to say, that goes against Lessig's goals, and is why he chooses a left wing running mate.

Re:Non biased?

[PraiseBob]

Counterpoint- Lets say your goal to reduce funding to national security succeeds-

Do you think the spying components will lose money first? Or will the oversight components be first on the chopping block? You want a weaker govt, that means less oversight, right?

OR
Since the govt can't afford to run the program, maybe it will be outsourced to a private company that can provide national security features, and as a bonus they can monetize the information they get by spying, to fund the program by selling directed advertising. Its a win-win for you: Now the govt doesn't have any information on you, and you don't have to pay extra taxes.

Is that the future you want? I understand that point of view just fine, but you are not following it to the logical conclusions.

Re:Professor?

[JoshuaZ]

Please don't get hung up on arguing over definitions. It isn't productive. The point Lessig is making is that there's very little say that the general population has in what actually is happening. That statement, whether true or false, is independent of choice of labeling.

So much wrong with this

[sideslash]

From Lessig's pitch:

the greatness of America will be reflected in its government too. It once was. When we are finally equal citizens, it will again

Bovine excreta. Lessig doesn't actually believe that. America's government used to be elected by white male landowners. And all the freedoms and founding principles that were important to the Founding Fathers --- er... "Parents" -- is stuff Lessig and Sanders totally hate and want to demolish. The whole continuum from European socialism to forms of communism is simply not compatible with the founding freedoms of America as articulated in our fundamental documents.

My basic problem with Sanders was very well expressed by Margaret Thatcher: "The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money." So let's radically change our government so we can start confiscating and spending other people's money even faster, because that will make everything better!

Re:So much wrong with this

[ConceptJunkie]

The reason socialism is gaining traction in the American electorate is that the level of ignorance has reached the point where the average voter isn't aware that TANSTAAFL.

Re:Lessig/Sanders, Sanders/Lessig

[netsavior]

Millionaires and Suckers, which one are you? Check your wallet.

Re:Professor?

[DarkOx]

Please don't get hung up on arguing over definitions.

WRONG - That is the kind of post modernist thinking that has gotten us into all this trouble in the first place. That is how you end up with "kinetic military actions."

Definitions and ensuring we have a common understanding are VERY IMPORTANT. If fact its the cornerstone you need for the very idea of "codified law". This is why Trump is polling so well. People want someone that says what he means. They are truly tiring of weasel word soup. If Trump actually had ideas, that were not vapid, offensive, irrational or some combination of those, he'd have the GOP primary locked already. As it is I know people who don't agree with a single thing he has said since he announce his candidacy yet they still pick him over the SIXTEEN other GOP candidates. That really says something!

Re:Lessig/Sanders, Sanders/Lessig

[Rougement]

I'll drive you to the airport.

"That hasn't worked out so well"

[Brannon]

What is it that you miss so much from the Bush years? the trillion dollar war searching for nonexistent WMDs? the insanely mismanaged response to Katrina? the disastrous economy with bank bailouts and huge unemployment? the political outing of undercover CIA agents? the debunked evidence of yellow-cake uranium presented as fact to the UN? Abu Ghraib prisoner torture? How about his complete failure to find Osama Bin Laden? Or do you just genuinely miss having the rest of the world hate us?

No thanks. I'll take the current economy with its strong dollar & 5% unemployment, 15+ million people newly with healthcare, no more wars, a nuclear agreement with Iran, regularization of relations with Cuba, legalized same sex marriage, strengthened bank regulations (without hurting the economy), a dead Osama Bin Laden, DADT repeal, etc. BTW: it's also nice to have a president who can speak in complete sentences.

Good luck with Jeb!

Re:Professor?

[ArmoredDragon]

That usually doesn't work, a common analogy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.

The founding fathers were very adamant that there must be certain inalienable rights, and a balance of power between the have's and the have not's.

And thus, a republic was born.