[EL] "Our Corrupt Politics: It's Not Only Money"

[Robert Wechsler]

In his review of Lawrence Lessig's /Republic Lost/ in the current issue 
of the /New York Review of Books,/ Ezra Klein ignored what I think is 
Lessig's most important contributions to the literature on campaign 
finance and lobbying:  his focus on institutional corruption and, more 
specifically, on the national political system's "dependency" on money. 
That's dependency as in addiction. For those of you who haven't read the 
book yet, trying plugging money and members of congress into Lessig's 
definition of "dependency":

    [A] dependency develops over time; it sets a pattern of interaction
    that builds upon itself; it develops a resistance to breaking that
    pattern; it feeds a need that some find easier to resist than
    others; satisfying that need creates its own reward; that reward
    makes giving up the dependency difficult; for some, it makes it
    impossible.


Klein's principal criticism of Lessig's book involves Lessig's focus on 
money in politics, and yet he never mentions how Lessig presents the 
problem of money in politics. That's neither fair nor informative.

For more, see my review of Lessig's book 
<http://www.cityethics.org/content/lessig-effects-elected-officials-dependency-problem> 
in a November City Ethics blog post.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research
City Ethics, Inc.
rwechsler at cityethics.org
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