Silicon Valley free culture favorite Lawrence Lessig is considering a run for US Congress. His mission, outlined in a 10-minute video you can see at lessig08.org is to "change congress" by removing the corrupting influence of money.
I'm sure Lessig is a smart guy and the anti-lobbying, anti-corporate message is surely important (and I fully support it) but it's anything but original, having been put forth by John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich, Ralph Nader, and almost every cliche TV drama politician ever to grace the screen. I can't see Lessig's pretentious PowerPoint playing well beyond his core nerd base, and even those followers might lose interest once we hear any other policy positions from him (if by chance he doesn't follow all of the techno-libertarian ideals). If ever there were a candidate to typify the Facebook effect (or whatever we're calling the internet-popularity-doesn't-translate-into-votes phenomenon), then Lessig is surely the one.
I don't mean to sound unnecessarily negative. It just sounds like Jackie Speier is a better all-around candidate for the Democrats.
See also coverage at BoingBoing, Valleywag, TechCrunch, Andrew Sullivan, Wired.
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