Why Congress needs creative destruction

2016-02-01

There must be a dozen books out right now talking about the disfunction in our politics. Every day pundits, commentators and journalists analyze why our political system doesn’t work.Most all of them don’t see the forest from the trees. What they miss, and what Harvard Professor and onetime Presidential candidate Lawrence Lessig understands, is that the central institution, at the core of our democracy is broken. Not broken in a way that’s easily fixable by a single election or by a new Speaker of the House. ...

There must be a dozen books out right now talking about the disfunction in our politics. Every day pundits, commentators and journalists analyze why our political system doesn’t work.

Most all of them don’t see the forest from the trees. What they miss, and what Harvard Professor and onetime Presidential candidate Lawrence Lessig understands, is that the central institution, at the core of our democracy is broken.

Not broken in a way that’s easily fixable by a single election or by a new Speaker of the House. But that the institution itself has been so infected by things like big money, gerrymandering and our modern day methods of campaigning, that just maybe the whole things has to be pulled up by its roots and reimagined and rebuilt.

In fact, that’s why Lawrence Lessig briefly ran for President of the United States and wrote about his ideas in Republic, Lost: Version 2.0

Listen to my conversation for Radio WhoWhatWhy with Professor Lawrence Lessig:

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