There is a brilliant article by Lawrence Lessig on the website of  The Nation entitled “How to Get Our Democracy Back.”     http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100222/lessig Please take the time to read it.

It cuts through the details of policy debate and the obfuscation of media-driven punditry to expose the root of the dysfunction of our democracy:  Fundraising Congress.  Our government has abandoned the task of governing in favor of the task of fundraising.  Lessig’s article dares to call this by its name: Corruption.  If we are to rescue our nation from the self-destruction of its institutions, one thing is clear:  Corruption must NOT be tolerated.  “The change we need” is not just policy or party change, but fundamental change in the way government and elections are conducted.

Progressive activists are at a loss.  All through the last decade progressives were led to believe that if only the Republicans could be voted out of power in Washington, things would change.  Then, in the waning years of the decade it happened.  Republicans lost their majority in Congress, then a Democratic President was elected with the campaign message “Change we can believe in.”  All the rhetoric and promises of the pundits and the campaigns gave us hope that at last there would be fundamental change in Washington.  Now, at the dawning of the new decade, nothing has changed, and we are left casting about for explanations and lapsing back into cynicism and despair. Clearly, a change of party-in-power is not the “change we seek.”

These days the activists that are as galvanized by righteous indignation as progressives were in the 00’s are the right-wing Tea Party conservatives who gather popular support by clamoring for…change.  Sound familiar?  Presidents Carter, Reagan, Clinton, and Obama were all elected because of popular dissatisfaction with the direction of government and a general desire for change.  The Gingrich Revolution rode into Congressional power on the strength of term limits with the populace chanting “Throw the Bums Out.”  The resurgent Democrats in the ‘06 election took over Congress with the mandate to change the disastrous policies of the current government.  Over and over, the American people - conservative, liberal and every other stripe - have latched onto one party, policy or ideology after another believing that if only government would change, things would be better and we would have a government we could support and be proud of.  What is it about the word “change”  that captures everyone’s support and imagination?  What is it that we really want to see changed?

It is not just the divisiveness of party politics that treat government like a football fantasy league where loyalty to your team matters more than doing the right thing  for the country.  That is a symptom of the problem, but not the root of it.  It is not just special interest lobbyists demanding the attention of the elected legislators.  It is not just the inefficiencies of the bureaucracies of large government that need to be changed, nor is it just the starving of social services and government programs by the proponents of small government.  It is not just the default options of warfare as foreign policy and defense spending as domestic policy, nor is it the acceptance of massive deficits and taxes to fund spurious projects.  No.  The essence of the frustration of Americans with our government is the thing that drives all these problems: Corruption.  It is the corruption of democracy by the emphasis on fundraising to buy elections.  Whether an individual legislator is actually influenced to write specific laws favoring the corporate donors that fund his/her campaigns does not matter as much as the perception by the electorate that their voices, their votes, do not matter as much as the money that powers larger and richer than they can offer to keep that legislator and his/her party in office.  The Congress does not consist of individuals advocating what they truly believe to be best for the country or their constituents, but only desperate men and women proposing what they understand to be “possible”  within the constraints of  the need to keep the funds coming to keep themselves and their parties in office.  The administrative branch, then, no matter what its goals, finds itself unable to accomplish sustantive changes unless they favor the interests of the funders of congressional campaigns.  The “Art of the Possible” becomes the “Science of Spin in the Service of Fundraising.”  The tyranny of corruption has a stranglehold on the entire system.

Lessig’s article proposes two substantive changes that would make a real difference: 1)citizen funding of elections through a combination of public funding and limited small-dollar donations.  (The Fair Elections Now Act, a bill currently before both houses of Congress and sponsored by both reform-minded Democrats and Republicans)  and 2) banning any member of Congress from working in any lobbying or consulting capacity in Washington for seven years after his or her term.

In light of the recent Supreme Court decision striking down constraints on corporate “speech” in the form of campaign funding, Lessig suggests that a Constitutional Convention may be required to make the two changes he proposes able to withstand the scrutiny of a politicized court.  That is a worthy goal, but a discouragingly difficult one fraught with worrisome uncertainties.

In the meanwhile, I believe that the most immediate step we can take is to send the message that corruption will not be tolerated.  It is still the voters who elect congress, in spite of the influence of the funders.  If popular anger and yearning for change can consistently defeat incumbents of both parties who have sold the institutional integrity of Congress to the corporate donors, eventually the message will get through.  It does not matter what party a legislator belongs to if he/she acts like a minion of the fundraising machine instead of a representative of the voters.  Until integrity is restored to government, debate on policy issues and rhetoric on values and ideology are useless.  Real change we can believe in will never happen.  It is time to rise above labels of conservative and liberal, to go beyond red states and blue states and demand  an end to business as usual.  Corruption must not go unpunished.  Real reform will only happen when elected representatives realize that all the fundraising in the world will not get them re-elected if the voters see them as corrupt.  Then, when we have institutions of government that function as something other than fundraising machines, we can have real national debates about the need for health care reform or the evils of deficit spending, or peace -making as foreign policy.  The voices of the health insurance corporations, the financial giants, and the military-industrial complex will be muted by voice of the voters.   Perhaps we can actually get the Fair Elections Now act and the banning of the revolving door to K street passed, resulting in real reform.  Now that is change we can believe in.