Many people, including me, have expressed their conviction
that the intrusion of money by lobbyists has totally distorted the political
process. We are no longer operating as a democracy that is controlled by the
“People”. Rather, the political process is now determined by the flow of huge
funding that is involved in the election of any member of Congress.
Lawrence Lessig is a professor at Harvard Law School. His
resume includes his younger life as a conservative, including the period when
he served as a clerk of conservative federal judges, and his later life as a
person with more liberal views.
While he clearly detests the influence of money to the point
that he thinks that our “Republic is Lost”, his arguments are never
“over-the-top”, but measured to ensure that his arguments are understood.
He starts from the principle that the Constitution supports
the basic notion that Congress should be exclusively dependent on the “People”.
Anything that alters this dependency jeopardizes our democracy. He then
indicates how the flow of money through lobbyists representing special
interests has distorted our policies and laws.
While he never claims that the flow of money represents
bribery or a quid pro quo (although it occasionally happens), he does support
his claims that the dependency is altered from the “People” to the special
interests. Whether one examines the time devoted to raising funds or the
distortions associated with policies, e.g., special tax code revisions favoring
special interests, there is a strong perception by the people that the
influence of money is determining the political outcomes of congressional
actions rather than the people.
He does eventually propose possible strategies to change the
process, none of them are convincing. Without a mechanism to really change the
system, now supported essentially by the Supreme Court, the reader is clearly
left even more depressed!! There is no hope!!
