Corporate & Securities Law

The president’s promises

Larry Lessig condemns the president (from the Left) for breaking his promise to change the way Washington works. After listing promise after promise to take on the lobbyists and “special interests,” Lessig concludes:

Obama’s strategy as president has not been to “change the way Washington works.” Rather, he has pushed reforms in the same old way, with the same old games.

One would think a Harvard Law School professor and director of a something-something Center for Ethics would not be so naive. Criticizing the president for promising to change politics and then, once in office, playing the same old politics is like criticizing parents for telling their kids about Santa Claus. There are no unicorns, Prof. Lessig, as much as you and I both wish there were. Our best hope for changing Washington is not to let hope triumph over experience and believe if we just elected the right person everything would change, but to make the structural changes that will deny the politicians the power they always abuse. Only a smaller government is one that will do less damage when wielded by politicians, no matter what their stripe or promises to behave. Republicans promised fiscal restraint when they took the House, and we got profligate spending; Obama promised to drain the swamp, and yet the alligators and mosquitoes still infest it. When will we learn?

Full post as published by Truth on the Market on August 13, 2010 (boomark / email).