Larry Lessig is a great writer and a brilliant legal scholar, but my goodness does he have bad political instincts:
I can’t begin to understand why in a war where soldiers go to jail for breaking the law, the US Congress is so keen to make sure telecom companies don’t have to fight a law suit about violating civil rights. Obama doesn’t support that immunity. He promises to get it removed. But he has signaled agreement with the compromise, which I assume means he will not filibuster immunity as he had indicated before he would. I wish he had decided differently.
But the key thing we need to keep in focus is what the objective here is. This is a hugely complex chess game. (Or I’m assuming it’s complex, since how else can you explain losing twice (ok once) to this President.) The objective of this chess game is to keep focus on the issues that show America why your candidate should win. Keeping focus (in this media environment, at least) is an insanely difficult task. But one tool in that game is picking the fights that resonate in ways that keep focus on the issues that show America why your candidate should win.
That doesn’t mean you (as a candidate) should change what you would do as President. Or change what you would fight for. But it does me that we (as strong supporters of a candidate) need to chill out a bit for about five months.
We (and I think that means all of us) can’t afford to lose this election. When we win, we will have elected a President who will deliver policy initiatives I remain certain will make us proud. If he doesn’t, then loud and clear opposition is our duty.
If “our” goal is to elect a Democrat president, then Lessig’s advice is spot on. If, on the other hand, “our” goal is to use politics as a way to improve public policy, Lessig’s advice couldn’t be worse.
When politicians—and especially presidents—come into office, they are immediately subjected to intense pressures from entrenched special interests seeking to preserve the status quo. No matter what they said on the campaign trail, they begin to hear, over and over again, arguments against making any significant changes or goring any special interest group’s ox.
It requires a strong will, a sense of momentum, and some independent centers of political capital to break the iron triangle and achieve serious reform. A new president will only buck those special interests if he has a strong motivation to do so from the outset of his administration. If he’s not sure, he’ll go with what most of his advisors tell him to do, and most of his advisors will be, almost by definition, Washington insiders who will give him the advice of the Washington establishment.
This means that if any grassroots movement wants to have influence over a presidential administration, it has to get that president publicly supporting the movement’s goals before he gets elected. Right now, Barack Obama needs grassroots supporters. He needs their votes, he needs their money, and he needs their volunteer time. If he feels that a particular position is a litmus test for a significant number of supporters, he may be willing to take a public stand on that issue even if doing so is otherwise politically inconvenient. And once a candidate has taken a public, high-profile stand on a given issue, he’s more likely to follow through once he gets into office, lest he have to face criticism for flip flopping. (See, for example, GHWB’s “No New Taxes” pledge, which many credit with losing him the 1992 election)
The absolute worst strategy for a grassroots movement is to keep its mouth shut during a campaign and hope the candidate rewards that movement’s support by spending political capital on behalf of its causes. Politics doesn’t work that way. Grassroots movement cease to have any significant leverage once a candidate is in the Oval Office. A president will have no particular reason to stick his neck out for a given issue if he didn’t commit to doing so on the campaign trail.
I should emphasize that this has nothing to do with ideology. Conservatives were somewhat disappointed with Ronald Reagan, massively disappointed with George HW Bush and George W. Bush administrations. (the “conservatism” of today’s most rabid Bush supporters bears no real resemblance to the conservatism of Goldwater and Reagan) Likewise, liberals were sorely disappointed by the Clinton administration. Presidents never come close to fulfilling their campaign promises, and their ideological bases tend to be the most disappointed with the results.
This means that grassroots movements must make politicians constantly feel that their continued support is contingent on constant and high-profile support of their issue. Politicians must constantly feel that if they compromise on that issue, a chunk of their base will close their wallets and stay home on election day. Only with that kind of constant pressure will politicians feel the need to reiterate their support for the movement’s issue throughout the campaign, and only that kind of constant reiteration of support will lead the candidate to follow through in office.
This is why every Democrat who was disappointed with Obama’s FISA position should write the campaign an email saying she had planned to give money to Obama, but will be giving it to the planned effort to unseat Steny Hoyer instead. Make it clear to him that selling out liberal values means losing the contributions of liberal donors and the time of liberal volunteers.
The obvious retort is that for all of Obama’s flaws, McCain would be much worse. But I think this ignores the cyclical nature of politics. Parties in power tend to steadily lose popularity—and with it, political efficacy—over time. Eight years of incompetence have caused people to hate Republicans. If John McCain wins the fall, it will be with a narrow majority, no real mandate, and a hostile Democratic Congress. Moreover, in the likely event that things continue to get worse in Iraq, he’ll be an easy target for a Democratic challenger in 2012. So a McCain victory would be bad, from a liberal perspective, but it would be far from a disaster.
A movement that treats each election as so crucial that it will accept any compromise to ensure their own guy wins the election is a movement that will be forever taken for granted by its party. If a movement wants to change the world, it needs to be willing to lose an occasional election in order to make its threats credible the rest of the time. Lessig’s apparent attitude that the election must be won at any cost—even the cost of giving Obama a free pass to ignore the issues that Lessig cares about—is ultimately self-defeating.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.