He then sat down for a discussion with AEI’s Norm Ornstein and a question-and-answer session with the audience, during which he continued to discuss both his belief that America’s political process needs fundamental reform and strategies for achieving that goal. He noted that he hoped attendees understood his broader diagnosis of America’s political malaise, as well the more-specific campaign finance proposals for which he is well known.

According to Professor Lessig, America is a “vetocracy” wherein special interests coopt the political process for their own benefit, using their influence to effectively “veto” any new proposals and perpetuate the status quo that benefits them. In his view, this state of affairs is inconsistent with the representative democracy America’s Founding Fathers envisioned. Both sides of the political aisle see their moral visions thwarted because of these circumstances and, therefore, should be in favor of restoring the American government’s capacity to offer a genuine representative democracy. Professor Lessig offered statistics and anecdotes that mapped his conceptual framework onto today’s political reality.

Event Speaker Biographies

Kevin A. Hassett is the State Farm James Q. Wilson Chair in American Politics and Culture at the AEI. He is also a resident scholar and AEI’s director of economic policy studies. Before joining AEI, he was a senior economist at the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System and an associate professor of economics and finance at Columbia University Business School. He served as a policy consultant to the US Department of the Treasury during the George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations. Dr. Hassett has also been an economic adviser to presidential candidates since 2000, when he became the chief economic adviser to Sen. John McCain during that year’s presidential primaries. He served as an economic adviser to the George W. Bush 2004 presidential campaign, a senior economic adviser to the McCain 2008 presidential campaign, and an economic adviser to the Mitt Romney 2012 presidential campaign. He is the author or editor of many books, among them “Rethinking Competitiveness” (2012), “Toward Fundamental Tax Reform” (2005), “Bubbleology: The New Science of Stock Market Winners and Losers” (2002), and “Inequality and Tax Policy” (2001). He is also a columnist for National Review and has written for Bloomberg. Dr. Hassett frequently appears on Bloomberg radio and TV, CNBC, CNN, Fox News Channel, NPR, and “PBS NewsHour,” among other radio and television outlets. He is also often quoted by, and his opinion pieces have been published in, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. He has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania and a bachelor of arts in economics from Swarthmore College.

Lawrence Lessig is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and was formerly the director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. Before rejoining the Harvard faculty, he was a professor at the University of Chicago and at Stanford Law School, where he founded the school’s Center for Internet and Society. He clerked for Judge Richard Posner on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals and Justice Antonin Scalia on the United States Supreme Court. Mr. Lessig serves on the board of Creative Commons, MapLight, Brave New Foundation, the American Academy in Berlin, AXA Research Fund, and iCommons.org, and he is on the advisory board of the Sunlight Foundation. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Association. He has received numerous awards, including the Free Software Foundation’s Advancement of Free Software award, the Fastcase 50 award, and the Scientific American 50 Award. Mr. Lessig holds a bachelor of arts in economics and a bachelor of science in management from the University of Pennsylvania, a master of arts in philosophy from Cambridge, and a J.D. from Yale.

Norman J. Ornstein, a resident scholar at AEI, is a long-time observer and scholar of Congress and politics. He writes a weekly column for National Journal and The Atlantic. For 30 years, he was an election-eve analyst for CBS News; in 2012, he was a principal on-air election-eve analyst for BBC News. He served as codirector of the AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project and participates in AEI’s Election Watch event series. He helped create the Continuity of Government Commission, for which he is senior counselor. Dr. Ornstein led a working group of scholars and practitioners that helped shape the McCain-Feingold law, which reformed the campaign financing system. Dr. Ornstein played a major role in Senate committee reform, in the creation of the Congressional Office of Compliance, and in the creation of the House of Representatives Office of Congressional Ethics. He was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004 and currently directs the Academy Project on Stewarding America. His many books include, most recently, the New York Times bestseller “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism” (with Thomas Mann, Basic Books, May 2012), which was updated in paperback version in September 2013, named Book of the Year by Ezra Klein’s Wonkblog, named one of the 10 best books on politics in 2012 by The New Yorker, and named one of the best books of 2012 by The Washington Post.