Lessig on Obama
For the few who follow my blog, it’s probably no secret that I’ve become a huge fan of Lawrence Lessig. In his work on copyright and culture, and in his new shift to corruption, he has always been able to step back from the technical and the minutiae, and brilliantly and profoundly discuss the aspects of these subjects that truly affect our society/world/etc. He’s succeeded in doing just this for an important debate: Clinton or Obama.
Lessig just posted a new video on his website, in traditional “Lessig” presentation style, that discusses why Barack Obama should be the Democratic candidate on the US ballot this November. He’s not been shy about his endorsement of Obama, both in terms of his stance on technology, and also his desire to change the way government works to reduce the influence of lobbyists and other external entities on the decisions made by the government — corruption (again, Lessig’s new focus). In this latest treatment of the issue, he performs (what appears to an armchair analyst to be) a solid analysis of the qualitative differences between these candidates after acknowledging the negligible differences in their policy stances. He covers several issues, including character (moral courage w.r.t. the decision about the Iraq war), integrity (swiftboating and smear campaigning), and what they would actually do (discussing their use of the word “change”). However, my favorite part is near the end when he discusses how Obama as president would “inspire as he leads” — a quality that has been missing in a major American leader (heck, world leader) for some time.
Perhaps Obama seems all the more inspiring because of all of the badness we’ve seen in the last 7ish years. But, for what it’s worth from a ineligible-to-vote blogger on their soapbox, I think he’s the real deal and the best option for some much needed change in the US government. I shall be watching CNN anxiously tomorrow.
Check out the video, or go to Lessig’s original post for more.
