Lawrence Lessig at SXSW, Talking Politics and Culture

I’ve never heard Lawrence Lessig speak, but I’ve enjoyed his blog and his public thoughts for a while. I don’t necessarily agree with everything he says, but damn, does he have a way of saying it. His presentation at SXSW today was passionate and inspiring, and certainly thought-provoking. I chatted about it with Robert Fabricant over a giant plate of barbequed meat, and our discussion walked around the nature of bringing political awareness and participation to the masses. Lessig wasn’t making a call to arms to get people involved; in fact, his message was just the opposite. He’s explicitly asking people to withdraw their financial support of all politics until there’s an explicit step – a law – taken to withdraw the nature of lobby-funded re-election campaigns.

Let me explain, because it’s not an elevator-pitch message. As I understand his argument:

1. Politicians are stuck in a constant rat race for re-election; their goal is not to appease their constituents, but to gain another term. Appeasing constituents is a method; so is massive advertising of negative campaigning and branding. The second is arguably easier than the first, but it costs more.

2. Lobbyists help fund the re-election rat race. I don’t know the specific logistics of this one – how much one can take, and how it can be applied to campaigns – but there’s a direct financial connection between politicians and lobbying firms.

3. The long-term goal of the re-election race is a fast-track to k-street. After six or seven years in congress, making $160k a year, the politicians get a free ride to the lobbyist groups that were funding the rat race; their salary raises to $500k or $1M a year.

4. Politicians may or may not be “bought” – that is, they accept the cash, but their viewpoint may or may not change. According to Lessig, it’s irrelevant.

5. The public sees the money changing hands, and trust erodes – we believe that they are dishonest and, in his words, dependant, on the outside cash infusion. We believe that their objectivity is poisoned.

Some pretty dramatic takeaways from that argument.

First, the idea that the long term goal of politics is to move into lobbying, because it’s financially lucrative, makes obvious what wasn’t clear to me before – why nothing is really, really being done about lobbying. Fundamentally, the politicians don’t need the thousands of dollars they are getting in kickbacks, or the free lunches, or the flights on the private jets – that’s not what is helping lobbying stick around. Instead, politicians have a carrot at the end of the string, and they want to get the carrot.

Next, the notion that politicians are simply trying to extend their tenure in politics is one that’s obvious only when you look for it. The constant push for re-election is much like the constant push for quarterly profits; short term gains are much more useful than long-term vision, and all of the problems of shortsightedness are equally as present in politics as in investing.

Finally, and most importantly, Lessig is making the point that the biggest issue isn’t that some of our politicians might be corrupt; it’s that we have an overwhelming (82%, at last poll) feeling that our politicians are corrupt. From this feeling comes all of the problems of mistrust; we won’t rally around their cause, and we won’t offer them the benefit of the doubt, and we begin to extend the mistrust from things that have a factual base to things of all nature. What’s more, we turn to major companies like Starbucks to solve the problems of the country far before turning to the government, spreading a continuous message that our government isn’t just inept (ie, the DMV) – it’s actually evil.

To Lessig, if we threaten – as a collective, as a giant set of contributors – to withdraw all public financial support from the 2010 election, we can pressure politicians to pass a law removing the ability for re-election campaigns to be funded by lobbyists; we can remove the culture of quarterly profits from government (the constant push for re-election), and allow elected officials to actually try to represent their constituents with some degree of fidelity.

That’s a lot to handle over a plate of barbeque.

Jon Kolko