Transcripts For CSPAN Lawrence Lessig On Campaign Finance 20150216

[captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] you have been watching cspans special president ial program on Campaign Announcements. You will find lots more coverage of past president ial campaigns at our website, cspan. Org. Just type road to the white house in the search bar. Weve been asking you who your favorite president is and why. Gerald ford had to deal with watergate scandal of president nixon and the end of the vietnam war. Edward says bill clinton brought the deficit down, has surplus, gas was cheap. You can post yours at face. Com cspan. Congress is off but members are busy tweeting as they are on their break. A freshman democrat tweeting happy president s day and thanks to mount burden for joining me to join washingtons birthday festivities. Marsha blackburn tweets pleased to speak with a class at churchill college. Joni ernst says rate to talk to veterans today during my 99 county tour stop. Colorado republican can buck tweeting out a message and picture great turnout on a snowy day for a town hall. Lots more for you to see at your column cspan. Harvard University Law professor, Lawrence Lessig formed a super pac to back candidates that want to change the campaignfinance system. Hes as the Current System favors wealthy over others. He talks about made a pack and its activities journey recent election at the Jewish Community center in San Francisco. [applause] hello, everybody and welcome to the jccsf. Im delighted to host all of you for a terrific evening with Lawrence Lessig. [applause] a special thanks to tonights partners, Uc Hastings College of law, usf school of law mac light Creative Commons and counter pac. [applause] our guest this evening is harvard law professor, lawrence less Lawrence Lessig. He is known as the elvis of cyber law. One of the countrys most influential theorist on the intersection of law, clerk for task culture and the internet, hes shifted focus to the corrosive power of money on politics. He walked 200 miles for the New Hampshire rebellion to encourage citizens to and the system of corruption in our nations capital. The next walk starts this sunday and its not too late to book a plane ticket and join him. We have flyers in the lobby. They look like this. They can tell you how to participate. Lawrence lessig is here tonight to talk about made aipac, the crowd funded super pac to end all super pacs and what is in store for 2015. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me and josh join me in welcoming him to the jccsf. [applause] so my computer shutdown and now i have to try to make small talk. What shall we talk about as it comes back to life . The weather. Its going to be incredibly cold and New Hampshire. The high right this and it is six degrees in the place we are starting our walk. I apologize. Its wonderful to be here, back, in San Francisco. Talking about something i began here in San Francisco because i was forced to begin talking and thinking about this. My dear friends from San Francisco, aaron swartz who, the second anniversary of his death is this sunday. And whose memory is vibrant in this community and around the world. But what he was focused on, he often described to me as simple justice. As he talked to people about the simple injustice of the world we find ourselves in, there was a growing frustration. One way to understand this frustration is to recognize the way in which we refuse to acknowledge the real nature of the problem we are talking about. America has been focused for the last year on a range of problems related to race in America Michael brown eric gardner, the injustice of the systems that we feel as a system of inequality that gets described as a system of racism, and there is evidence to support the racism. This recent study of the racial distribution of death of 218 deaths involving police tries to map the predicted incidents according to race and you see the predicted incidents for whites are fewer than the actual incidence. You take this and brought this out to what the actual differences are and as the statistician summarizes, the answer to the question what is the probability we would see a distribution at or more extreme than this one, assuming race plays no factor in Police Related thats is on order of 10 to the 82. If you are not a mathematician you might wonder what that is like. You can compare it to this number 10 to the 79, which is the probability of being hit by lightning, 13 times in one year. [laughter] which means the probability of 10 to the 82 is a really, really, really small probability, which is to suggest there is a high confidence in the judgment that the race of the victim is related to the violence. There are lots of quibbles one could have with this study that what comes through in our culture is the view that this manifests a certain kind of racism. That gets framed as if it is the racism of bull connor or the racism of the 1960s. And the 50s, and the 40s and all the way back. There is no doubt in my mind there are jim close there are jim crow racists out there but there is no doubt a pattern like this is not reduced by that sort of racism. It is a different racism, maybe a more fundamental racism, a more fundamental inequality. If we were to talk about how to solve that, we would look beyond the simple image of a hateful person we would look for structure of poverty or the stupid war on drugs. Structural problems that require we think of a more difficult task, a task that solving this inequality without focused picking out the evil of individuals picking out the evil or outrage, but we dont do that. We cant do that. Not because its hard for people to understand these issues as contributing to these kinds of racism, but the focus on simple injustice the focus on the outrage, the focus on the difference between the good and the evil in this story pays structures of media that talk to us about this. It pays the activists organizations that want to rally us about this. Keeping it simple keeps the fury going. So while we get nothing done, we remain angry and focused on the simple injustice we see. Heres another example tied directly to what i want to talk about today. The simple injustice around the institution that is congress will stop that is congress. We all know the perception of their confidence in this institution has collapsed. 7 have confidence in the institution of congress. The crown jewel of our democracy according to our framers article one, congress, 7 of us trust. More than 50 call the institution corrupt. When we talk about it being corrupt, we focus on people like jack abram off jack a runoff or william jefferson, people we think of as criminals. There is a quote corruption inside this is the tuition, no doubt. But there is also no doubt that the failure of this institution is not produced by that form of corruption. It is a different kind of corruption, a more fundamental kind of corruption. It is not bad souls engaging in criminal acts, it is good souls engaged in a system that drives to this corruption. If we wanted to solve that corruption, we would have to look elsewhere. Look elsewhere from beyond the risen walls, but we dont do that. We cant do that, not because its hard. Our focus is on the simple injustice, the outrage of thinking of this institution in these good versus evil terms because it makes it easier to organize. It makes it easier to vilify the results you dont like, using it simple keeps the fury going while we get nothing done in fixing the problem it represents. The simple injustice. The simple injustice hides the real injustice. The real work its going to take to fix it. If we wanted to think beyond the simple, to understand something beyond the simple injustice, what would it be at least as it relates to the institution i know something about congress . What are the real problems here . At the end of august, hong kong discovered something which triggered an incredible revolution in the streets first by young people and then joined by people from across the city. What they discovered was the method hong kong would be forced to adopt for electing the governor. China had promised in 2007 that the chief executive by 2017 would be popularly elected but the chinas People Congress laid out the procedure and as the procedure described, the ultimate aim is the selection of the chief executive by universal suffrage upon nomination by a broadly represented nominating committee in accordance with democratic procedures. A nominating committee. A committee composed of 1200 citizens, which means about. 0 24 of hong kong. What the chinese were describing was this twostage process there is an election where all the citizens and on in hong kong would have the right to vote, but theres a nomination process where the select 1200 would have to vote. And you have to do well in the nomination process to be able to run in the election. A twostage process with a filter in the middle between the two stages and that is what triggered the strike in hong kong because the view was the filter was biased. As protesters describe the 1200 being dominated by probeijing business and political elite. As the chairman of the hong kong credit party put it, we want genuine universal suffrage in hong kong, not democracy with chinese characteristics. But is this particular feature chinese . The answer is its not unless boss tweed was an ancient chinese profit. [laughter] because as tweed put it, i dont care who does the electing, as long as i get to do the nominating. We should describe the system tweed was constructing. Lets call it tweedism. It has this form theres two steps, the nominating process with the tweeds vote and the citizens vote, and a filter in between. That is what boss tweed wanted. In the history of democracy in america, there is a long history of tweedism, most dramatically in the old south stop its embarrassing to recognize 1870, america passed an amendment to the constitution that guaranteed to africanamerican males the right to vote. The perception at the time that was passed was this would be the future of democracy in america and in fact the future looks more like this. For 100 years thats exaggerating a bit. For 95 years, it was the concerted effort to exclude africanamericans on the ability to vote to stop no place more ambitiously than the state of texas, which enacted by law and all white primer. Theres a general election where all americans got to vote. Africanamericans, if they got to register. Theres a white primary and you had to do well in the primary to run in the general direction in the general election. A twostage process that excluded in the critical first step africanamericans from the system, but the consequence that they had a democracy that was responsive to whites only. That is a profound and indira singh stage of tweedism in america. But lets think about tweedism in the new america. We take it for granted campaigns will be privately funded. Funding of campaigns is a is an essential step to getting elected to any major office. We have a twostage nominating process. To get the funders vote, he has to campaign for a, which means you have to raise money for it. Candidates spend for congress, anywhere between 30 and 70 of their time raising money to run the campaigns to get them elected. They do it in things like this where they have parties where they say for 500, you can come to a reception and 420 400, a photo up, meet and greet and reception. This is a game that gets played, but they spend an extraordinarily an extraordinary time dialing for dollars between two and four hours of a calling people they never met developing a sensitivity and awareness about how what they do will affect their ability to raise money. Bh skinner gave us the image of the skinner box were any stupid animal could learn what buttons it needed to push to get the sustenance it needed. This is a picture of the modern American Congressperson. [laughter] as the modern American Congress for some learns which buttons need to get pushed to get to the the votes they need. We develop a sixth sense. What is needed to satisfy the obligation . They become shape shifters as they constantly adjust their views in light of what they do what they need to raise money. One person describes always lead to the green. He was not an environmentalist. This is a twostage process with a filter in the middle, begging the question is the filter biased . That depends. That depends on who the funders are. We here is what we know about who the funders are. About 5. 4 Million People contributed at least one dollar to any congressional campaign, which means about 1. 75 of america contributed to campaigns. But if you take that 1. 75 of america, the top 100 gave as much as the bottom 4. 70 5 million contributors. The top 100 gives as much as the bottom 4. 75, but its only less than 2 of america we are talking about. If you look at people who gave 2600 at least that is about point that is about. 044 percent, a little less than the amount of people named lester in the united states. Thats why i called America Lester land. You look at 10,000 or more, that is. 008 of. 008 percent of america. If you think about the effect of the Supreme Court decision for the decision that created the super pac. In 2012, 132 americans gave 60 of the super pac money spent in that election cycle. Whether it is lester land or sheldon city the point is we have a system where the tiniest tiniest fraction of the 1 dominates this first stage in our election process, a twostage election, a general election where we are all invited to participate and something if you have an id, and not a white primary, but a green primary in america and it you must do well in the green primary to run in the general election. There are people like jerry brown, but you believe and your Campaign Manager believes you must do well in the green primary and so you live your life as if you live the priority. The vast majority of americans are excluded from this article first that with the consequence that we are a democracy responsive to the funders and maybe only its a little controversial im not allowed to show the princeton study. This incredible study was published last year trying to measure the effect of the economic elite on political decisions. They gathered the largest empirical study of actual policy decisions in the history of medical science and tried to relate the actual decisions of our government to the views of the economic elites and organized interest and then the average voter. They found a graph that is intuitive if you think about what this says those favoring a policy change those from zero to 100 the probability goes up. Thats the way you would expect it to be the more it is supported, the more likely it is to be adopted. Something similar with interest groups. The more who supported, the higher the probability it goes up. This is a responsive system for economic elites or organized interest groups. Here is the graph for the average citizen will stop the average citizen. That is a flat line. Regardless of the percentage of average citizens who support something, it has no effect on its probability of being adopted. As i described in england when the preferences of the economic elite and the stands of organized groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average american appear to have only a miniscule and near zero statistically nonexistent impact on Public Policy. This is a democracy where the average voters views dont matter to the probability of a policy being adopted. Here is one context in which that consequences quite dramatic. This graph was put together to describe the change in the distribution of average Income Growth over different periods across our history coming out of recessions. Heres the first one we are talking about. The bluegrass represents the percentage going to the bottom 90 and the red are is showing the percentage going to the top 10 . This is showing the top 10 getting 20 in the bottom 90 of getting 80 . You might have trouble with that or not, but the autumn 90 is getting as eating significantly more than the top 10. Here is how that carries out across the next period. The 12 the 2009 2010 recovery the autumn 90 actually lose income relative to the top 10 who gain more. This change, according to hacker and pierson is tied directly to changes in government policy and changes in government policy are tied directly to the influence of the tweeds in our democracy. This is tweedism. Its not dominated by a beijing political elite, the green primary dominated by a business and economic elite. It is just as extreme as the story in hong kong. Remember, i told you. 024 percent is the percentage of hong kong that is to be in the nominating committee. If you ask what percentage of voters maxed out to just one candidate, they gave 5,200 that number and percentage of voters is. 024 percent. Many would say 5,200 doesnt achieve real influence so its worse than. 024 percent of the average of percentage of voters, but it is as tiny, it is as distorting, and it is just as wrong. What does it do . What is its effect . A recent book describes america not as a democracy, not as an aristocracy, plutocracy or clip talker see america has become a vetocracy. That means its a system where it is easy now for economically powerful groups to block a change. It is tied in his view to our systems of checks and balances and our polarized political culture, but in addition to those, its tied to the number of funders who fund campaigns. In a system with a tiny, tiny number, that means a tiny, tiny fraction has the power to block reform because their disagreement with reform is enough to stop the policymakers from adopting it. This is not just reform on the left this is any change if it is against organized money whether from the left or the right fails. Anyone coming into a room like this has an issue you care about all stop it could be Climate Change health care, tax policy i dont care what the issue is. At the federal level, you all have an issue you think is important. You spend your free time, if there is such a thing a thing anymore, supporting causes that would be about this issue. Even if your issue is the most important issue, change on that you wont happen until we change this corruption first. This corrupting influence is the first issue because it locks the ability of our democracy to control, to steer the direction of our democracy and it stops us from having that control. We are like the bus driver who discover his Steering Wheel is no longer connected to the axle. So what is the solution here . The truth is the the solution is not hard to describe. If this is the picture and the problem is the bias filter at this center, the solution is to find a way to either eliminate the filter or to eliminate the bias. The number of republicans in the spirit of Tate Roosevelt has become to push has come to push ideas like vouchers as a way to fund this problem. Every voter gets a voucher think of it like a starbucks card a store value card that allows them to allocate a certain amount of money to candidates running for office and candidates can take those vouchers if they agree to limit the contributions they take to vouchers lets say contributions are 100. 50 a voter would be about 7 billion. The total amount spent way candidates was 1. 5 billion, which means this israel money but the point is the voucher system would mean money coming from many, many people, not just the. 04 percent or the. 024 percent. Its not everybody is going to participate but its not biased in the way the Current System is biased by allocating the funding our to the tiny fraction of the 1 stop democrats have been pushing this idea of matching funds john sarbaness the government by the people act take small contributions and multiplies them to make them much more valuable. 100 becomes 1000 because of a 921 match, encouraging candidates to get lots of small contributions, not contributions coming from the. 04 . Sil still a filter, but not biased in the way the Current System is biased. The thing that matters more than the Current System is, god for bid, votes. Voters will stop that is what is mattering to the democracy. Equal votes from equal citizens. To describe the solution to this problem is not hard. Why dont we have the solution . Why do we have lyrical movement to push for this solution . Political experts tell us is most people dont care about it. Most people look at the corruption and they are ok with it or they are ok with it relative to other issues they want to fight about. I dont think thats actually true and evidence comes from a series of studies. The most recently did was in december of 2013. We asked the public how important is it to you we reduce the influence of money in politics. The answer was 96 of americans said its important to stop the very next question we asked was how likely do you think it is we will reduce the out of money and politics. 91 said its not likely. Just like most of us wish we could fly like superman, but because 91 of us are convinced we cant, we dont throw ourselves off of Tall Buildings regularly. We are designed to our human mortal status and live life the way one would assuming you cant fly from the ground or Tall Buildings. We dont organize to do anything about it because we dont believe anything can be done. Weve added to been franklins slogan that if there is nothing sure but death and taxes by adding federal government. That means the question here is how do we resist this resignation . What is the strategy for fighting resignation . The problem is convincing people there is a solution that could actually be adopted. What is it we could do for that . As many of you know because im sure many of you were supporters, the beginning of the year in march announced we were going to watch something called the mayday project mayday as in these as in the distress signal saying its a mayday for this democracy. The objective is to be a super pac to end all super pacs. What would it take to run a series of campaigns that would win a congress committed to Campaign Reform and we would fund that by kickstarting it you cant kickstart a Political Campaign but to fund this amount to run this experiment. Six are certain amount from the bottom up and get as much of it matched the top down as we could. Committed to fundamental reform the plan we laid out is to run a pilot in 2014 and then based on the fact, when in 2016 and push legislation in 2017 and in 2019, prepared to protect it by passing whatever constitutional reforms would be needed to defend against the Supreme Court will stop in the first stage, we were able to raise 11 billion from more than 57,000 contributors around the country. [applause] with the objective to elect a candidate committed to this fundamental reform. The truth is with that as the objective, the project was a bust. Because out of the eight candidates we supported, only one of those races was really competitive. People look at this and say this demonstrates the public doesnt care. Its not as bad as that looks. If you look at the report of the data we were able to pull from surveys before and after it shows a significant number of voters are deeply committed and care about this issue, just in the synonymy of the election in 2014, that was enough to the tsunami of the election in 2014 was enough to overcome. We lost the bet because we did not prove to the skeptics a system that could scale, so there were no clear path to 2016 which was our objective. To get us to a place were we could elect a congress emitted to fundamental reform. When we lost in this dramatic way, one part of me was relieved at the defeat because the truth about politics as its run today is that its deeply dissatisfying and disgusting and most of how it works. The constraints of Politics Today is almost impossible to imagine using it to educate people in a constructive way about this issue. Ive likened it to trying to teach and algebra course by screaming out the various lessons and students are walking through because most people dont want to hear the message while they are trying to watch a patriots game. Most people want to ignore it. The method for communicating to them must communicate in a way that is almost impossible to move people. But the other part that echoes a kind of guilt in how it felt an authentic to the ultimate objective of this movement because it game was an insiders game. You are electing regular candidates to fix the problem with other insiders will stop the problem with that is that we dont believe insiders when they tell us they are going to fix the problem. 80 of americans believe the reforms that have been passed have been designed to help current members of congress to get reelected than to improve the system. We are cynical about the reformers as much as we are cynical about everything else. We have to find a way to stand outside the system that the challenge here is to be authentically outsider in the effort to force change on the inside. That sounds like a harder problem and in some ways, it is. There was something so appealing about the idea of demonstrating that throwing up a message demonstrating congress should be enough to rally voters and raising hundreds of millions of dollars to win a congress, there was something simple about it even if there was something somewhat corrupt about it. So this forces us to think whats the way to go forward that could force a change on the outside, from the outside, a choice of change. Im going to describe three elements of that strategy. One element is to make the change plausible. One element is to make congress panic. One element is to make the is it make the issue president ial. First is the plausible. Mayday had the idea of electing a congress. The bet was we could demonstrate the power of the message to elect candidates. This was a bad year to make that bet, so now we have two pivot to figure out what the work is that can contribute to the project. What are we doing now . The objective is to figure out a way to turn the army around and to focus it on a much more manageable project of recruiting the incumbents to admit to reform. If theres a majority in congress and those committed to reform, the project is to shrink gap to make it seem plausible that we could actually get fundamental reform. Not necessarily a majority committed to the vouchers but committed to some reform. How will we deploy this . A top secret project that gets announced at sxsw, theres a strategy for a platform to enable the tools of this infrastructure we call the internet, and incredibly powerful ability to recruit targeted actions in districts that convince voters in districts to get their members to commit to reform and we believe it is feasible to get within striking distance by the end of 2015. In march, this structure is announced and we launch a project to bring about a commitment. Republicans and democrats both to this system of fundamental reform to make it seem plausible , but thats not going to be enough. Much more interesting is creating panic. These guys this guy, george mason, one of the framers of the constitution, two days before the constitution was published in philadelphia, he noticed a problem. The only way to amend the constitution at that time was a provision that Gave Congress the power to propose amendments. George mason stood up and said on the floor of the constitutional convention, what if congress is the problem, a system where only congress can amend is not much of a system of congress is the problem. Its the first known instance of the simpsons duh. They created a second way to amend the constitution. Article five gives the states the power to demand Congress Call a convention, not a constitutional convention, but a convention for a very limited purpose to oppose amendments. What is clear is the idea of a convention terrifies washington. It terrifies the seed to imagine this entity that can propose amendments, even though it requires 38 states to have a power called into being by this process terrifies them. The closer we get to the magic number the constitution specifies, 34 states calling for a convention, the more the panic grows. What is not recognizes that right now, there are between 24 and 28 dates who have passed resolutions calling on congress to call an Article Five Convention. Vermont, california and illinois have, last year, past proposals to call for a specifically related to the corrupting influence of money in politics. As more of these organizations push for more states to join, we will in the next two years get incredibly close to the magic number. I think we will probably get over the magic. As that happens congress will respond because historically it has always responded to cut off the Convention Movement and giving people who are pushing for a convention that they want. We may, through this process get what we want from them even before there is a convention. Best example is the amendment gave us an elected to stop originally there was a senate picked by state legislatures. People didnt like that. They got the senate would be filled with rich people who were corruptly elected. [laughter] they said we should change that to have a directly elected senate. The senate is not going to have anything to do that will stop there is a process for calling for an Article Five Convention and when they got within one state of enough states to call for an Article Five Convention congress sent out the 17 the moment created the elected senate. So, that panic produced reform and that reform was central to bringing about what was perceived to be a solution to the problem and thats the same dynamic we should expect here. The closer we get to forcing a constitutional movement, the closer we get to achieving something of what Congress Might do. Maybe most important immediately is president ial. In the modern american political system, reform only happens if it comes with the president pushing it, not just the president pushing it, some people might remember, theres this dive barack obama who talked about this problem precisely and once he walked into 1500 pennsylvania avenue and looked around, he realized there was no chance congress would ever address this problem, so he dropped the issue completely. We need to get a Congress Close to being able to pass it and a president who wants to pick it up and make it president ial. It is not their natural wish to talk about this issue. If you look at the polls related to corruption in government, and 2000, it was not even an issue on the top 10 list. 2004, not an issue. In 2008, it was number four on issues american stop president address. In 2012, it was number two second only to jobs. Corruption in the way our government functions. And while everyone was thinking about rob lowboy of a check that time rob glaser, and while everyone is singing at the coke brothers the koch brothers. If you look at the websites of romney and obama, nowhere in the discussion of issues did they even mention the problem. I had a researcher look at it and is the first time in as far as we can see, when an issue in the top 10 of gallups list was not mentioned by either candidate in the address of policy issues a promise to take up. They dont want to talk about this issue. Its too embarrassing to talk about this issue. Its hypocritical, so they will avoided as much as they can. The challenge in 2016 is how to get them to talk about this issue as they go around and engage in the rain dance to convince people to support them about what ever issue they want people to support them for. The challenge is how do we get to turn the table and force them to consider what theyd rather not consider . How do we get them to address a topic they would rather not have to address . Thats the objective of the New Hampshire rebellion. Not rebelling against the government but rebelling against this agenda the politicians will bring in the president ial candidates will bring. Forcing them to say how are you going to end this system of corruption in the by getting people to ask this question again and again and New Hampshire. New hampshire is a prime target for this. It is a critical primary election and its a state with an important precedent related to this issue. In june of 1999, john mccain went to New Hampshire and made the system of corruption the focus of his campaign and the focus led to him winning the primary in New Hampshire. But just before he had done that, New Hampshire had a tie to this issue that was much more powerful than the people who continue to talk about it. The tie was this woman a woman named Doris Haddock who on january 1, nine to 99 started a walk in los angeles to cross the country to washington dc, 3200 miles. She began at the age of 88. She arrived at the age of 90, walking into washington, there were hundreds of people following her, including a lot of congressmen who drove out to the last mile, celebrating the incredible importance she had focused on addressing what was then for her the fundamental issue, the corruption of the system of Campaign Finance reform. The New Hampshire a million seeks to revive this by remixing the granny d walk. We did the first instance of this walk across New Hampshire in january. She walked longer, we walked colder, a total of 190 miles did i mention in january . A walk that totaled 210 people across the course of the walk featuring tens of thousands of new recruits in New Hampshire who signed up to force candidates to talk about this issue in the primary and reaching a Million People in the state and around the state of New Hampshire, talking about and focused on this issue. This january 11, the anniversary of her death, the second of these walks happen. This time, not just one, there will be four rounds converging in concord on the 21st, which is the fifth anniversary of the Supreme Courts contribution to this mess, the case of Citizens United stop the objective is to recruit 50,000 voters to ask this one question how are you going to and this system of corruption in washington . The theory is if enough ask that question and if the race is sufficiently competitive, it creates an opportunity on the republican side certainly and maybe on the democratic side for a candidate to pick this issue up and if they pick it up and make it an issue, there is a chance that it becomes an issue in the president ial election. When that be enough . In my book, republic lost i was skeptical it would be enough. I also describe what you could income as the regent data. The idea of this was if its impossible for people to believe ordinary politicians will really take this issue up, what we need is not an immigration politician. Imagine somebody like david souter or Christine Whitman or just imagine the voice. A nonpolitician who committed to run for president with one promise that when elected they would do one thing to pass whatever the reform is that person thought was essential and then promise to resign. Thats it. Do one thing, a regent the regent is there while the children grow up. So we are going to force you to grow up by taking away this corrupting influence and the ordinary politician, the Vice President becomes the president. The critical thing about this idea is theres no ambiguity if that person was elected why that person was elected. Barack obama says i was elected for 44,000 of her reasons, but this is one person elected for one reason and theres no reason for congress pushing back against it because its clear with the American People said and i was the plenty of dissension to give that person with that person wants because its the easy way to get rid of that person. Once you give them the bill, theyve got to go home and you can get back to ordinary politics as usual. This regent president system, if we could find such a leader to step up and take this challenge, i think would do it and would actually bring about the kind of reform we need. Maybe its possible to do it without but the key is to recognize we need the president in this mix. We need to move the congress, we need to scare the congress, we need the president to lead. Three parts to make possible this change. Because this change is possible. It takes one statute. I think we need 15 senators to switch place. Its possible if people like you stand up and focus not just on the simple injustice, the injustice of the corrupt criminal, but the real justice that weve got to bring back to the system, to the equality of citizens which this system has lost. It is my view, it is my life that this boy started me on that we can get back. It is possible. But the key here is an old harvey milk strategy its possible if we give people hope that there is something that can be done. Not hope in the sense our friend obama has abused the term, but hope in the sense of what vaclav havel described. Heres what he said about hope. Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. It is a dimension of the soul is not prognostication, its an orientation of the spirit and an orientation of the heart. Hope is not the same thing as joy that things are going well or a willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success but an ability to work for something because it is good. Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism, it is not the convention that something the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense. If something does make sense here, it is my view this republic makes sense that the ideal but 225 years of struggling have evolved makes sense here. There is something to hope for and there is something even to be optimistic about, that if we organize in the way we now have the capacity to organize, there is the chance, not the certain the, the chance that we can restore this inequality of citizenship again, for once maybe it has never been here then for once, but for all of us that is our obligation the moral obligation, and obligation it can inspire all if it is understood to be something that speaks to the best of our tradition, which is including and expanding and building a democracy. That expands the capacity that we have. Thank you very much. [applause] thank you, im happy to take questions, eager to take questions which i understand there are mics at both sides. Sitting in the middle, please come to the aisle, thank you. Question over here. So thanks for a great talk. My question is related to how do you get everybody and their individual issues in line with this greater issue right whether its either health care, environment, the lists go on. It seems like there is an emotional piece and how do i place my emotional federal reservor around Climate Change and intellectually the bigger issue is the first issue its hard for me to get emotional about this bigger one and take the same emotion and pour it into this underlying piece. Thats my discussion, my question. Right. So and this is a general problem that people have described around this Reform Movement for many years. I think the first step is to recognize something about how you cant get what you want. I dont think its enough to think about how i cant get what i want. I dont think the personal selfish perspective is sufficient here, even if your selfish perspective is about a Public Policy that you think is great for the world. I think the other part about it is to recognize why it is wrong and when you see why it is wrong, when you see that it is wrong because it has disenfranchised us. It has taken from ordinary americans a fundamental part of what a democracy is, equal representation, it has taken that away. There is a certain anger that grows with that. Think about the protest in hong kong again. That was a purely procedural protest, purely about procedural issues, they didnt have the democracy yet. The very idea that they would be excluded from the first stage of the election was enough to motivate them to say to hell with this, we are not going to accept this as a democracy. And so the conception of it being unjust and wrong was what motivated as much as them thinking they couldnt even map out from the perspective you were talking about which issues they wouldnt get past, right. It was the injustice, the immorality about that way of thinking about it. I think its not hard to see why our system is like that. Whats hard to do is to get people to be as passionate about changing it, not because they dont see its wrong but because they dont see its possible to change it. And so if you, if we can find the way to link the recognition, heck, im not going to get anything anyway, with and there is some thing, this is insult added to injury. Then i think there is a chance to begin to coordinate. Now i dont want to convince you to give up your work on solar or Climate Change. Those are incredibly important issues. Regardless of what the issue is, i dont want you to give it up. I want you to tithe. I want you to give 10 to this cause. If you can get everybody to tithe, to give 10 to this cause, then there is enough to imagine this cause taking on the fight that it has to take on. And this fight in the end is actually not as hard as other fights we have taken on and won. For example, racism, which, of course we havent won, but we spent a long time making extraordinary progress with a really hard problem because you dont just wake up and no longer erase it. It takes generations to put that out of the d. N. A. Of a society. This issue is just the problem of the incense incentives of running a campaign. No they wont lament giving up the world where they sit like a pigeon in a cage and peck on the phone to get the person at the other end to give them the money they need. Nobody likes this system. Its just about creating the incentives where they can see they can win in a different way. So this is not as hard a problem in some very important sense. I think if we can get justice recognition beyond the simple injustice, something beyond the simple injustice, i hope, i think thats the only way we can make the progress happen. You have been fighting for the mic again. I dont have any additional questions. Thank you, im convinced on like the tithe of the 10 . I have been convinced for some time, it was just hard to, not do both, but that there is an emotional piece there and i think there is something great about everybody working together on that underlying piece, so thank you. Thank you. Next question on this side. Hi, i cant think historically of any government that isnt built to protect the interests of the elite and even in the grass where there was better income distribution, that is where civil rights were certainly not in place for many, many people who lived in this country. Im wondering if you could address that and whether some of the peoples movements in this country the occupy movements or the current marches all over the country after the shooting deaths arent a more effective way of scaring politicians. I dont think there is a golden history. There are particular periods which worked better, but didnt work better for all issues. Even at a time when i think congress was not as captured by money as i think it is now it certainly was incapable of dealing with civil rights because of the vietnam power of democrats in the senate from the south. So there is never a point in our history where you can look back and say things were just grand. What do we want to think follows from that point. I do think we can see in our history ideals which still resonate with us, many that we have discarded fortunately like disenfranchisement of women or the failure to recognize the equality of race those are gone as ideals. But the ideal of this equality of citizenship was from the founding an ideal which we can still collect and use. Madison, when he described our democracy, he said we would have a branch that would be dependent on the people alone. We dont have that now. We have dependent on the people plus dependent on these funders. He went on to say what he meant by the people. He meant not the rich more than the poor. So that is an ideal that we can use to point to the democracy we should be pushing for. Now, you ask a fair question. Are more radical revolutionary changes more effective . And so far i dont think so, not that anything has been effective, but so far i think what we have seen is that when pushed to the extreme like that, this enormously powerful system responds in an incredibly brutal way. We could look at what happened in even occupy east bay or forget occupy. Think about the brutality of the response to what aaron did. This system is normally enormously powerful to deviation. That is what commits me to inside the norm, the morals of the system, we have to use the system to change it. Now, im happy to be proven wrong and the more radical solution to achieve what we all are aiming for. Im not saying that people should give up on the more radical, but i think we need to recognize a path that doesnt require tearing down everything. There is the path. I think its possible and doesnt require indeed even invite people to give up fundamental commitments. I could give a version of this talk to a group of republican, conservative republicans and i think find a way to show them as much the commitment of ending the corruption of the system as much as people care about Climate Change or whatever people on the left would care about. I dont think it is as extreme in the brutality in this system which could be done if we found a way to speak across the divisions and push in a way that united in the way that im trying to describe. We over here on the right. I guess i want to go back to the article 5 conventions that you were talking about earlier. When i get from a lot of the political changes that were promised like financial reform, Campaign Finance reform, we get promised one thing and it works its way through and by the time its done its gutted of any actual power or real meaning. My question is what does this amendment youre envisioning look like and how do we get the change that were actually demanding . So youre describing the product of a system where money has an enormous influence because its learned how to exercise its influence over the system. The thing they are afraid of when talking about an article 5 convention, no one knows how to control over that entity. There is no reason to not say that the entity would produce fantastic ideas. There is a worry that it would produce terrible ideas. What i described here wasnt the product that the great ideas would come out of that process, but instead that that process puts enormous pressure on congress to try to stop that process and it does that by giving the political movements what they want. So the last time we came close was a balanced Budget Convention calls in the 1970s and 1980s. We became very close. Congress adopted a whole series of reforms that responded to that push and stopped the push by that response and so all that im saying right now is that we should recognize this as another tool to create the kind of pressure for reform that right now doesnt seem to exist because theyre happy to run the system the way the system has been run for the last 20 years. And the best evidence of that is, we have an election, the first thing that happened after the election is a passage of a bill that basically undoes the financial reform that the dodd frank, critical part of the derivatives, raises the contributions you can make to parties from individuals so you can give million its of dollars to parties that you couldnt before. All of that is done by democrats and republicans recognizing they need to do this to return the favor to those that just brought them to power. That cant change unless they are terrified about the consequences of that. One dimension of that terror is coming from that unspecified power from an article 5 convention. Thank you so much for your time and all of your work on this issue. He can crux we need 15 senators and 45 representatives to flip. I think its fees and tough in this polarized and i havious political environment. Two questions from that, tactically is it better to insulate this issue from the peerbased plibs or try to channel those forces behind this issue . Second, most more thanly on a more actionable level, to build trust between members of congress to try and bridge that gap, what sort of informal mechanisms or institutions can we establish . Exchanging constituent letters to the editor, it may be too california for you, but maybe a Group Meditation session. [laughter] look, i was here for nine years. I can get the meditation stuff, too. This is the really critical point that its hard especially for progressives to embrace that we need more than progressives to win. Thats not to say we have to compromise anything, but to the say that we have to recognize that fundamental reform only ever happened at the constitutional level if its cross partisan. Thats to say i dont want to get these 15 senators not by saying were going to kick out 15 republicans and get 15 democrats even if democrats would love that, we only get 15 senators or 10 maybe, maybe its enough for 10 if we can get republicans to begin to talk about this issue. What we know is that if you talk, get republicans in a context where theyre not worried about losing the seat to a democrat, so choose between a republican candidate who cares about reform and a renteria candidate who doesnt, the reform candidate does better. The strategy that suggests is begin to think about safe republican seats where there is a chance to talk about republicans who care about reform. So one example is dave bratt who beat eric cantior, a completely safe republican seat a guy who spent almost no money called eric canton a crony capitalist, those are fighting words for a rightwing republican crony capitalist is evil. Thats exactly what this corruption is, its the production of crony capitalism. It corrupts government and capitalism. That credible fight complicated by other issues like immigration that people on the left are very upset about, i am too, that way of framing it makes it a credible republican concern as well. I think the only way we win is if eight to 10 republican victories happen around this, not because democrats have beaten them, but because republicans have begun to generate their own version of this. This election cycle, the pac supported the only republican candidate in the nation and to propose public funding of elections. That was a season tral part of what jim rubins campaign in New Hampshire was about. And that influence has now begun to spread. Republicans have talked about introducing a very large voucher bill, a 200 voucher bill which would radically change the way these campaigns are funded. This is the slow progress for things happening on the rye. If a slice of republicans, not 40 50, 20, even 10 were to open up the possibility of that as a future feature of their platform then the coalition to win is possible. Thats how its always been. The progressive era, Teddy Roosevelt is a republican, Bob Lafollette is a republican. Taft is a republican. The Progressive Movement is democrats and republicans, not just a bunch of democrats. Democrats have very conservative southern democrats who are not progressive in any sense at all. So that recognition of the need to find a way to knit together different political perspectives focused on this fundamental issue is what we have to discover. It is so counterintuitive to us and its not even clear organizationally, its possible, i often think that the Business Model of progressive organizations is inconsistent with the Business Model of winning because the way we want to talk about this issue is designed to make the other side hate us. So we want to talk about it, how terrible corporations are and how evil it is to have money in the system. Those may be true statements, but if you say that, you may turn off 40 of americans of what youre talking about. Is there an authentic and true way to talk about this that doesnt necessarily turn them off. The parallel that becomes more and more parallel to me about this is think about the civil rights movement. So the late 1950s and early 1960s, there is a fundamental divide in the civil rights movement. One part, the part we associate now with malcolm x thinks the way to win is to build as much fury american africanamericans for their cause as possible. If that includes violence, it includes violence. God knows there has been violence for hundreds of years not against africanamericans. Thats what it takes, thats what it takes. The other part of the movement which we now associate with Martin Luther king is the part that says, look, we have to speak so the other side can hear us. If we go out there and engage in violence, the other side doesnt listen anymore. They say lets deal with the violence. If they go out there with nonviolence, engage in a way that celebrates the best of our traditions they have to listen to us. Our parents and grand parents watched africanamericans being hosed and bullied with dogs and beaten on the bridge in selma, they responded by recognizing this was inconsistent with values that they had. They were speaking in a way the other side had to hear. I think thats what we have to do here. We have to find a way to talk so the other side has to listen and hears us and agrees. As i have done this, i have spoken to people on the right about this and there are people here on the right, there is a recognition that this common problem this is a common problem. We have a common enemy even if we dont have common ends. We have to find a way to organize against that common enemy and that objective includes recognizing, its not about beating republicans. Its about bringing republicans and democrats to recognize the corruption of the system. Question over here on the right. I love your speech tonight. I have been with you for eight months and im sticking with you, but i have a question because the first half of the talk explained that i have absolutely no chance of making any change, im in the bottom 90 . The top. 02 can veto any issue they want to veto. The second half you explained to me that in three or four years we could probably push through the one issue that the the top. 02 most wants to veto. What you left out was what the top 2 was going to do to stop us. Thats also what got left out before the last election. I didnt hear much about it. Im not going to ask you to fill in that blank. What im going to ask you to do, ask you why is you dont remove the filter between the top of mayday and the bottom of mayday because i cannot find out what your discussion intellectually up top and how you make your decisions and i cannot contributed to it. I have tried. You have nice people that deal with my emails, but there is a real strong block just like in our democracy. Well, lets separate the issues for a second. Lets talk about how its feasible first that the group that is disadvantaged, the bottom 90 or whatever you want to call it can mobilize the thing which the top might care the most preserve. Let me start by reinforcing the intuition that its a really incredibly hard problem. My friend, jim cooper, a democrat from tennessee, described capitol hill as a farm league for k street, k street where the lobbyists work. What he means, a common Business Model among members of congress and staffers in congress to become lobbyist. They make more money, they make tons of money as lobbyists. The annual Salary Increase was 1,452 . If youre on the inside and you imagine your future as a lobbyist, somebody comes along yeah, we have an idea of changing the system fundamentally so lobbyists cant be paid that much anymore, youre not likely to encourage that reform. The insiders have very strong power to resist that reform. I completely agree with you. It might well be that there is nothing to be done, might well be. So what do you do in the face of what might well be. I get from many people all the time the argument cant be done so dont do anything about it. Thats a really tempting idea because its really costly to do something about it. Its really painful. Its really hard. I have got young kids. Theyre not happy that im trying to do something about it. Let me tell you, when i look at the temperature in New Hampshire next week and this is a nice idea lets not do anything about it. Something you might know when i was a kid, i was a republican. I grew up, but i was a republican when i was a kid. Here is what you hear republicans say all the time. We love our country. As i have gotten up and grown up and being a liberal i hear liberals say it, too, its not just republicans. We used to chant that, we love our country, love our country. As i have become a law professor and looked at the great parts of our tradition standing next to the terrible parts, but the great parts i feel that love, i feel that love. What i know about love and you know about love is what love means is you never give up regardless of what you face. I wrote this at the end of my book the story of this woman standing before me in a dartmouth speech saying you convinced me professor, there is nothing that can be done. It is hopeless. There is no change we could ever achieve. As i said in the book, i was terrified it was a total fail because i dont want to produce that reaction in people, but the image that came to me was of my son, my then only son who i love and imagine a doctor saying to you your son has terminal brain cancer and there is nothing you can do. So what would you do. You have avoided my question entirely. I agree with everything you said. I have taken the first part which im saying what would we do. I said that wasnt my question. So you dont want me to continue the story. [laughter] quid pro quo, great. So the point to this is, should be obvious, the point is if you feel this, youre going to do this regardless were going to work and youre going to work too. The second part, how do you organize and regulate this one entity trying to help in this project . I think were not permitted inside right now and we will win if you harness the rest of us. Right. So what i described and dropped the south by southwest project on top of was a process that will invite exactly this project to figure out how we recruit. I think the only there is no justification. The only explanation that i would offer is just understanding the incredibly constraints of executing in a month a project that tried to take on what we tried to take on. There is a million mistakes to learn from. Were trying to learn at least from half of those mistakes as quickly as we can. I eagerly want to find a way to bring in as many as possible. But i also know from the staff that was there there is only so many hours and only so much we couldnt get it done. I take your question and that i answer it as a pledge from you as a quid pro quo that you step up and be a part of that. Thats exactly what i profess the shift has to be. Its how to recruit people to do the work person to person as opposed to how do we recruit television stations to do the work and yes, i agree, thank you. We have time for one last question, but before we get to that i just want to invite everybody immediately after the program to join us in the atrium for a Dessert Reception and book signing. We have time for one last brief question. Im, a donor to mayday and in 2008 as getting marijuana legalized was a side show ignored, president ial candidates didnt talk about it. And because of the ballot proposition, we now have five states in which it is now legal. Im curious about how come a similar strategy isnt being used for Campaign Fans reform so the state has a real system and, wow, this works really well, we can emulate this in other states and get something on the ground kneeled instead of waiting for congress. Its a great stat. Its being pursued to push at the state level to create, and the local level, to create the anticorruption ordinances. They succeeded in tallahassee and theyre pushing ones in montana. I totally support this idea. I also believe we dont have time. We dont have time for 40 states to come around to get their locate house in order before we take on the challenge of congress. We dont have time because we dont have the opportunity, a way to address the issues to motivate everybody to want to turn out and do something here like Climate Change or health carninge or equality or some way of finding a common purpose, again these are not things that can wait. So as much as i am eager to see those things succeed, i would not say that means we shift our focus and not also try to pursue this. We recognize that that might mean those dont move as quickly, but i think as they move together, they feed on each other. I think what we saw out of the victory in tallahassee was an extraordinary rearrival of the belief in part of the country that there was change possible. That helps us to work at the National Level too. So its a great strategy. Its just one more complementing strategy we got to be able to adopt. Im incredibly grateful you would come out and spend your time with this. Im hopeful that you will carry some of this forward to others and join at least one of these, maybe two, all three, and yes, there are some boots left in New Hampshire waiting for people to fill them, so come join us if you would like. Thank you very much. Thank you. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2015 our president s day schedule on cspan continues tonight with a special presentation on president ial Campaign Announcements featuring eventually nominees and political insurgents, it starts with Ronald Reagans 1979 declaration and ends with barack obama on the steps of the illinois Old State Capitol building in 2007. You can see our special lineup tonight at 9 00 eastern. All day today we have been asking you to join the conversation and answer our facebook question, who is your favorite president and why . Gloria says president obama hands down. He has had so much on his plate, economic crisis, wars, more wars, disease crisis, discrimination against him. And frank writes george bush because he overcame the greatest conflict since pearl harbor and also united the country instead of dividing it like the democratic congress. You can see more comments and weigh in yourself log on to facebook. Com cspan. This week on cspan in prime time, three nights of tech featuring the innovators driving companies. It should be a bentley or something instead its just a taxi. And for that privilege of leasing that car for 40 grand a year he gets to be improverished. Hear from insiders at facebook, paypal etc. Y and more part of a special presentation while congress is in recess