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Professor Lawrence Lessig was interviewed by Hugh Hewitt on his syndicated one-hour radio talk show about his opinion on presidential candidate Barack Obama. Following are excerpts from the interview:
When asked by Hugh Hewitt "do you think he is committed to net neutrality in a lot of the issues that those who deal in new media care about?" Professor Lessig answers:
Yeah. He was committed to those issues before the campaign started. But I know, especially from the kinds of people inside his Senate office, that he’s extremely sensitive to these issues in a way that I think net people would be very excited about.
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Asked why Obama has changed his position on public funding Professor Lessig says:
Well, Senator Obama has supported public funding for Senate and Congressional elections. He’s a co-sponsor of that bill. Nothing he’s done in the presidential election has questioned that. I think it makes it harder to support that, given what he’s done in the presidential elections. You know, I understand why he did what he did. But I also think that you know, this message that we need to begin to communicate about why it’s so important to get money out of these, especially in Senate and House elections, is going to be a harder message to convey now than it was before.
Hugh Hewitt asks whether Professor Lessig perceived that change as a breach of a commitment?
Professor Lessig says: Well, it’s certainly true that he said he was going to take it, and now he said he’s not going to take it. I understand, I understand why he made that change. I don’t think it’s been well articulated by the campaign, but I think the reality was when they sat down and they realized they would have $80 million dollars, and the other side was going to spend maybe $150 million dollars in 527s, or these kind of independent expenditures, it was extremely hard to, in that sense, tie your hands and continue to wage a successful campaign. So given the existing system, the relative, you know, disproportion of spending that’s going to be possible under the existing system, I can see why they felt like they had to change that position. And I think the real measure is going to be once he is president, Obama, how strongly he pushes for both the reform of the presidential system, and the change at the state and Senate and House level, because you know, even if we come to the view that presidents don’t need money from the Treasury to run their election, that you know, everybody can be like Obama and raise money from a million plus, close to two million people from the internet, that just is not going to be the case with the Senate and the House races. And that’s the place where money, I think, has its most …. effect.
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Hugh Hewitt asks: "... Are you disappointed in his sort of sitting on his lead and not engaging in these sorts of conversations, which could have had sort of Lincoln-Douglas debate potential for edifying American political discourse."
Responding to that Professor Lessig says: Yeah, I think if on, I don’t remember what the day of the election is, but if after the election it turns out we didn’t have a series of Lincoln-Douglas like debates, yeah, I’ll be disappointed. But what I’m saying is I don’t think, I think it’s premature to be disappointed now, because we’re just in the middle of the dance that both campaigns do when they’re trying to set out the terms of debate. So let’s see whether it happens. There should be a series of Lincoln-Douglas style debates. It would be fantastic for the nation to have that for the range of issues that we’ve got to think about.
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When Professor Lessig is asked whether Obama has changed his opinion on FISA after opposing it all these months, and now stating a preference for telecom immunity, he answers:
No, no. That’s not precise. What happened in that bill was that there are two parts to that bill. One part is changing FISA, and making sure prospectively the procedures are followed, despite the fact the President said he didn’t have to follow procedures. The second question is telecom immunity. And the point is, they put those two separate issues into the same bill, so they were buying off votes for the FISA change by granting telecom immunity. Now he has said consistently that he supports, he doesn’t support immunity, although he said he would support the compromise, the compromise meaning these two things wrapped into one bill, because he supports the change in FISA. Now that’s not a change in his position on FISA. What it is is a change in his position of whether he would filibuster a bill that has telecom immunity in it. What he said is, before he would filibuster. Now, he’s not going to filibuster, but he would support abolishing immunity in the future. That’s not a change. That’s not a change on FISA.
For the complete transcript, please go to: