Swamp Stories With Weston Wamp

This podcast is part of the Democracy Group.

This is Larry Lessig. This is another episode of Another Way. This is another attempt coming. Cause I don't really feel great about the last attempt with George, another attempt to talk and understand views from the other side. Today we have a unique opportunity to continue both conversations that this season has evinced. One conversation about reform and one conversation about what the other side, which from my perspective means the Republican Party party or the Republican's mind is. Because today I'm going to speak to a rare soul in America today, a young Tennessee Republican, very conservative Republican, two time candidate for Congress came within 1500 votes of beating an incumbent in 2014. Weston Wamp, who lives in Chattanooga. He's just 33 and works as a political strategist for an organization we spoke about a lot and who's chair or president. We've spoken to Nick Penniman. The organization is Issue one. Weston comes to us from a family that's extremely experienced in politics. His father, Zach Wamp, was a congressman from Chattanooga from 95 to 2011, which means he went to Congress when it became controlled by the Republicans and Newt Gingrich was the chair. And so Weston has seen the system from the inside for a very long time. And this conversation, as you'll hear, teaches a lot. It taught me a lot. It taught me something about this corruption called leadership pacts that I hadn't realized, which is even astonishing. More astonishing when you understand what Weston will talk about. So I'm grateful to have the chance to talk to him and to talk to him both about reform, reform from the perspective of people on the right and the question of what happened on January 6th and how should people on the right understand it. Stay tuned. So Weston, thank you so much for speaking with us. So Weston, as I've just introduced, you are working with issue one, which is of course one of the most important reform organizations in Washington, and important because it's doing work that many of us think is essential, which is to build bridges across what is an increasingly large ideological divide. And I just wonder if you could begin by helping us understand a little bit about how you or issue one think of this project of reform in America today.

Well, the focus areas of issue one have evolved even in my time serving as a senior political strategist to the organization because the needs which no matter what work you're doing there are always going to be dynamic priorities. And it turned out in the last 12 months that there were no greater needs as we saw the world, than to show and demonstrate and bring transparency to election related issues, given that they were under attack primarily by people within my political party. And so even though issue one is not, over the last several years been known primarily as an election reform organization, we felt like that was the best use of our collective skills and talents and relationships. I think I was drawn to this work and the work that issue one had been doing for years before I arrived. Because at the end of the day, Americans of all political stripes feel like Washington is bought and paid for. They feel like it serves special interests above them. And they, they're right. We don't agree on exactly what that means or exactly how you fix it. But this institution, and when I talk about this institution, so much of issue one's work is focused on the Congress that I had the fortune of growing up close to by virtue of my dad's service over 16 years, is one that has lost steadily almost any confidence among the people. And outside of the toxic bubble in Washington, Republicans and Democrats say, when they're polled, almost the exact same things about why they no longer have confidence in this extraordinarily important institution. And so I think what we're trying to do, just in a nutshell, in real layman's terms, I'm a layperson for sure, is we're trying to restore trust in an important American institution that is the representative part of our government.

So this is important to separate. And you have very nicely distinguished between transparency about elections or the whole process about how do elections work. So we put that in one bucket. But the second about how the institution of Congress works. Your father came to Congress with Newt Gingrich's coming to control Congress. And I was struck by a comment that I saw him make after reflecting on his time in Congress. And he said, for the first six years of the 12 years, we were focused on policy and principles and politics was secondary. The second six years, politics became primary. Raising money, going negative, consolidating power. I guess I would have had exactly the same view of the arc of the history of Congress that Gingrich and contract Republicans came to Congress with pretty high ideals about how they're going to remake government. But then they became, as both sides did, very deeply invested in partisanship. And I wonder, when you think about the trust Americans don't have, is it partisanship or is it a sense that they're not really caring about ordinary Americans?

I think there's a bit of both. I think most Americans don't get swept up in partisan politics. And so it's more just a feeling that in the small amount of their time and daily lives, if any, on a daily basis, but the small amount of their time that is consumed by the mechanics and movements of Washington, they feel like it's a place that is very much detached from their reality and ultimately is not all that concerned with their place in life and how government might serve them. The fundamentals and even the intentions, I think at this point of local government are quite a bit more pure. You'll still hear local and state politicians talk about government providing a dollar's worth of services for a dollar's worth of taxes and staying accountable. And Washington is this. It is so often even turns into a Netflix show or a film. And it is not real to people. And so many of us have watched our own members of Congress go there and sell their soul. And so I think a lot of my dad's reflections and even his interest in political reform, which was pretty unusual as one of the most conservative members of Congress, was born out of just feeling himself as a guy who got started in. He was a local Republican Party chairman, never held office before he ran to Congress. I think he felt a real purity in the first couple years and then realized how much politics, not policy, not the well being of the country, not the challenges that regular people face, but politics rules the day in Washington. And often that is really true on both sides of the aisle equally.

Yeah. So, but let's understand what politics means here. I mean, Jim Cooper, another congressman from Tennessee who first went to Congress in 83, had some time away, but then has been there, I think one of the top 10 most senior members of Congress. Jim Cooper, describes Congress as a kind of farm league for K Street. And what he means by that is members and staffers have this kind of business model, and their business model is how long do I have to hang around here before I can cash out and become a lobbyist or go work for a lobbying firm in some form. And part of that is reality, especially for staffers of the relatively closed door of a permanent life on Capitol Hill, given how low Capital Hill staffers might get paid. But part of it is just a sense of, you know, this is the way to exploit and take advantage of the system. So when a Republican, a conservative Republican, thinks about the problem of corruption in Washington, is that at the core of it or is it something else?

I think that's very much at the core of it. I don't think that revolving door alone is the issue. I think the role of money in the daily life of a member of Congress you have to understand that to really understand who controls Washington and what it feels like and what the pressures are to serve as a member of the House, particularly who's trying to get elected basically every year. I mean, you spend a year out of a campaign cycle at best, depending on how competitive your district is. But there's no question that there is for a lot of people, particularly ones who go to Congress, not wealthy. I mean, this is just a trend I think I saw personally. Ironic somewhat. But members of Congress who come from more of a middle class background are the ones who, with a few years of seniority, begin to see former colleagues who've gone onto K Street and have effectively sold their souls. I mean, there are members of Congress who I think go on to run trade groups and serve extremely well. And so there's no need to throw the baby out in the bathwater. There's no question on both sides of the aisle. It's not just Jim Cooper, who, frankly, is one of my favorite Democrats in Congress. There are people as far right. We had Jim DeMint, former Senator DeMint, on my podcast in the very early days of us producing swamp stories. And he talked about the very same challenge that you're talking about. He referred to it as cashing in. Cashing in is what happens when a member of Congress, based on the amount of seniority or influence they had, takes the short trip to K Street after retirement, goes from $174,000 a year, representing the people to fill in the blank, depending on how dynamic and well connected you are.

Yeah. And when somebody imagines that this is what their future is going to be, it must affect their ability to act as an independent family thinker on Capitol Hill. Right. Like you don't want to anger K Street if you're going to depend on K Street.

Well, there's no question. There's no question. But then you can also, even if your future is not on K Street, and let's say that you have intentions of parlaying your service, if you think into your future, you might parlay it into running an organization or an educational institution in your home state. And in the near term, if you're not thinking long term, even in the near term, your reelection is so often dependent on corporate PACs. And so you're dealing with K Street all the time. And a lot of folks don't realize it's one of the things that I've tried to be focused on in my few years a part of the democracy reform movement. Call it what you want. You've been one of the leaders of for a long time is just educating people on what the transactions look like here, that they are, in many cases, duplicative. It's a niche issue. But I talk a lot about leadership packs because they were originally created really unintentionally by Henry Waxman. They have led to this pervasive culture on Washington where you have one type of an account, your campaign account, that is very tightly regulated. And if you misuse those funds brazenly, then you may end up like Jesse Jackson Jr. Or Duncan Hunter, and you'll face real problems in your life. There's another type of account with which you can wine and dine and take your family on a vacation, and you'll never be called on it because there actually aren't statutes that prohibit personal use for leadership PACs. Well, why does that matter? Well, leadership PACs can take checks from corporate PACs, just like your campaign account can. But of course, these corporate donors, a $5,000 donation from a corporate PAC is nothing. But $5,000 when it can be converted to personal use for a member of Congress is a lot of money. It's a lot of steak dinners. There's so much interaction, even while you're there in Congress with certain lobbyists who have an interest on the committees or the subcommittees on which you serve, that there are conflicts. And there's no question that it undermines what should be a very precious and protected relationship between representative and the represented.

Yeah, leadership packs are the worst in this respect. Although I think we have to be honest, this is not something any politician could ever say. And as somebody who's never going to run for Congress, I'm free to say it, but I think we have to be honest that these members are just not paid what they certainly think they should be paid. Many of these people use leadership PACs so they can live life like a millionaire. Right. I mean, they have the leadership packs and the car to pick them up to go down to the fanciest restaurants in Washington, which are now extremely fancy because it's such a rich place in America. And as long as they're talking about a campaign issue or they're talking with somebody who's a potential donor, all of it gets sucked up by the leadership pack. So, you know, at $174,000 a year, many members of Congress literally sleep on their couches. They take showers in the gym because you can't afford to live in Washington, certainly, and have a family back in the district who you're supporting on $174,000 a year. But if you can cash into a Leadership pack, then you feel like you, you know, making a couple million a year, because everything you do is luxury. And that luxury is something that I think many people do.

Well, you connected the dots. I didn't finish connecting them, because you're exactly right. But this is what I try to explain to people, is you put yourself in the shoes of a member of Congress who lives in, particularly an urban environment. Say you live in the Houston area or Dallas or Chicago. And to your point, you know, when you're having to pay for two places to live, and if you have a family, then $174,000 a year does go quite quickly. Can and. And there are a lot of members of Congress who depend on these leadership packs as a way to offload some of the normal expenses of life. And so when the leadership pack is that important to you, being able to make your own checkbook balance, that's why it becomes so important that this pack or that pack is. Is among your most reliable donors, not just to your campaign account, but also to this leadership account. Leadership pack account. The one thing, and this is just a shocking revelation for me, even having grown up around these and having had a father who never had a leadership pack. You said as long as you talk about a political issue, this, that, or the other, that is certainly the case when we're talking about the campaign accounts. But when I say that we lack statutes governing the personal use of leadership packs, that is literally the case. I mean, we did an episode and basically talked about, this is crazy. But if. And I spoke to Jesse Jackson Jr. On the phone a couple times about this, had he bought the Rolex and fur coat and the other extravagant purchases he made out of his campaign account, had he made those purchases out of a Leadership Pack account, there quite literally is not a statute that DOJ could have. Now, could House Ethics have slapped him on the wrist? Maybe, but he would not have committed a crime.

Wow. I had not realized that. That's a really big omission. In my own understanding. That's very important because this just then is a slush fund, and it's a legalized slush fund, which, again, the dependency. It's hard for ordinary Americans to understand why $174,000 is not a lot of money. But, you know, I produce lawyers who, if they don't get $174,000 in their first year, feel like they're failures. Right as lawyers, and that just the reality of the inequality of America to live In a place like Washington and Houston or Washington and New York or Philadelphia, you know, your wife, like Ted Cruz's wife, you know, could be a very prominent executive as well, or your husband could be a very prominent executive as well. But the idea that you could survive in those dual environments without the slush fund is almost impossible. And so the slush fund becomes the source, the leverage for the corruption that makes it so the swamp continues to flourish. So obviously we're not going to have a lot of politicians who go around saying we need to raise the pay of Congress, although I've decided I'm going to make it a campaign to do as much as I can to say that. But, you know, there's actually now a new constitutional amendment that interferes. Like if you had a Congress that voted to increase its own pay, there then has to be an election, and then they have to vote for it again, which means, of course, those who voted for it would be punished in the election. So it's almost impossible to imagine. But the reality is, as you've identified and help me understand, this is an extraordinarily powerful weapon which special interests can use to basically buy and secure the dependence of congressmen on the agenda which they want to push, which is why there's a swamp. Okay, but if we don't think this is going to be fixed right away, when you think about what the solutions look like to erase this dependency, to make it so. Sounds like you're. I obviously never met your father, but my mom came from Chattanooga, so I want to believe that he's like she was. You know, I imagine they, you know, went to Washington and felt like he had an integrity to what he was doing, and he was trying to do what he thought was in the right interest of the people. And he could do that because he was independent. What would give every member of Congress that kind of independence? So we're not going to agree with their policies, but at least we could believe their policies or policies they're pursuing because they think they're right or politically the right policies. What would give that to them?

Well, it's funny, a lot of times I answered that question by talking about leadership Acts because I use it as an example that is not too difficult to explain to folks back home what's going on, how perverse it is and why it ought to be fixed. I think what's interesting about these issues and when I've talked to a lot of younger members of Congress about these reform type issues that could be sold, I think back home as Draining the swamp. This became very popular phraseology in Republican circles in the last few years. But we didn't do much of the draining, just talked about it. But it made for great, you know, campaign ads because people agree they want Washington cleaned up. And I think there are some ways that members of Congress can explain what's broken in Washington and why they're trying to fix it as a way to restore some of this trust. You know, I've never thought they were the end all, be all that others do. But this is one of the reasons that voters like to hear a politician rant, particularly a newer politician or somebody running for office the first time. They love to hear him rant about term limits. It's the same kind of thing people want to know, and that's a very basic rudimentary way of understanding what might, you know, push back on some of the swampiness in Washington. You know, I thought, for some reason growing up, I was always really peeved by the way that, as I remember it, and I won't recollect it exactly right, but the Congressional retirement pension, the way that you earn higher levels of pension if you're in Congress is simply by staying longer. And I just always thought, what a strange incentive. 20 years for my dad and his colleagues was the magic number, because there's this significant. Even under the. I think this was restructured in the early 90s, but even under the restructuring of congressional pensions, at 20 years, it becomes a pretty sweet pension package. And I always thought, how weird is it? And the American people surely would not like to know that in the psyche of members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, they're just trying to make it to 20 years.

Yeah, although it's a complicated one. I mean, I support term limits of some sort. I'm not sure. I sometimes fear that people will replicate California, which imposed term limits, and then the only people in Sacramento who knew how to do anything were the lobbyists, because everybody else was amateurs. But some term limits is fine, but there's almost voluntary term limits because of what Jim Cooper was talking about. If your whole arc of Washington is how do I get enough connections so that I'm now valuable and I can go step out and be a lobbyist? The return from being a lobbyist has got to be worth more than the pension rights you're going to get from Congress because those guys are paid a million dollars for their work. There's a kind of voluntary term limits that might lead to more transactional congresspeople than the congresspeople who go there and stay 30 years or 40 years because they think I'm just going to figure out how to be the best representative I can.

Fair. Fair. And I think, Larry, if we're honest about who in Washington is willing to press on and legislate towards solutions on some of these issues. And you talk about the revolving door because it's no secret, over time, but particularly the rise of K Street in recent decades has given this real golden ticket to members of Congress, particularly senior members or influential ones, to go and make a lot of money in a way that is usually not in the best interest or is often not in the best interest of the people. You've seen Republicans as well as Democrats in recent years. This is one of the areas where you have seen some bipartisan consensus on ending the revolving door. And the young congressman from Wisconsin who at issue one, we've had the opportunity to work closely with Mike Gallagher, really, from the time he showed up in Washington, was talking about how it was necessary. And I think that you'll find a common ethos among a lot of the military, former veterans who serve in Congress, that these types of traditions, as they feel like they are in Washington, are inappropriate and do not ultimately serve the Congress well. And they certainly don't serve people back home well.

Yeah, and I think that's a really important issue about how much bipartisan agreement we can build on this. But the puzzle that always strikes people on my side is the most obvious remedy here. And I know Mike Gallagher and I have enormous respect for him, but Mike Gallagher won't buy into this. And there used to be Republicans who bought into this, but no more. But the most obvious remedy to the dependence on private money, this distorting dependence through leadership tax, as you've now made clear, but also just even in funding your campaigns, is to have less dependence on the few who give and more dependence on many, many tens of thousands who might give. So some version of whether it's vouchers as Take Back Our Republic, Richard Painter pushes, or matching funds, which is obviously at the core of the New York system, these seem to be ways to address the common problem with the problem that we see in common. So why is it it's so hard to get Republicans to say, hell yes?

Well, the talk so often, particularly I think in Washington on the Republican side, it's leadership that stands in the door, even from some of the most common sense reforms. I've been doing a lot of dark money research, just updating my own self on what happened in the 2020 cycle. And it just. And I don't feel naive to the thought processes of Washington Republicans, but I still am blown away at the resistance that leadership will give to closing loopholes and fixing things that are just so broken they're not working really to anybody's advantage. And, you know, this subject you bring up is one of them. And I think what has worked in leadership's favor is that there's a very easy talking point, grassroots talking point, if you will, about public funding, and it is that I've heard a whole lot of members of Congress in my home state of Tennessee refer to it as taxpayer funding of attack ads. Well, that's pretty good. That's a pretty good counter. That almost closes the conversation and debate before it really can be had. I think there's. I think there's merit there.

Yeah, but I mean, the attack ads are going to be funded by somebody. So the question is, who should they be funded by? And so do you want to be dependent on a couple hundred corporate PACs or a couple hundred extremely wealthy people, whether on the left or the right? Or do you want the independence that comes from knowing that nobody's given you more than $1,000, which is what the matching fund proposals would be, and most people have given you $100 or $50 that would give a kind of independence that. I get why the politics is hard, but I'm just wondering why it's conceptually hard. Or maybe you're just saying it's not conceptually hard. Leadership just makes it impossible.

Yeah, leadership makes it hard. And like anything, it's more complicated than what meets the eye. A lot of the folks like you who've detailed how this would work and how this could work in terms of a matching system or vouchers were doing so and talking about it before what we at issue one referred to as the small dollar donor revolution. So you saw this in unprecedented, at an unprecedented scale, small dollar donors leaning into specific House races that were contested. And this is the emergence of Win Red and Act Blue has really changed the game. I'll tell you what I think doesn't get as much focus as it deserves is it's not just the influence that comes with the big donations and therefore the conflict on the side of the member of Congress. That's real. And there is a transactional nature to fundraising that should be concerning for all Americans. And I think it's the reason the Supreme Court has upheld the need for transparency. Because there's certainly the possibility that there's the perception of corruption, if not corruption, but I think maybe the bigger thing that the American people need to understand is that fundraising itself is all consuming to members of Congress. So not only does it present conflicts of interest, that's real. I think most people understand that part of it. What I don't think most regular people might understand is that even with a maximum donation of $2,800, members of Congress, especially the ones in expensive swing districts, they spend, you know, the estimates here, I don't care exactly what the estimate is. 30% of their time, 40%, some estimate, half their time fundraising psychologically. And I just know this from some of the young members I know who didn't realize what they were getting themselves into psychologically. Fundraising owns these members of Congress. To say that it's a distraction from doing the people's work is a huge understatement.

Yeah, that's exactly right. So when you spend, I mean, I surveyed the scholarly literature when I wrote my book Republic Lost, which is now a decade old, but the estimates were anywhere from 30 to 70% of their time raising money. John Sarbanes, when I first met him, which was just beginning his fourth term, Sarbanes said, you know, in my time in Congress, I've probably had lunch with members five times because everybody thinks if I've got time to have lunch with somebody, I've got time to raise money. And obviously I should be raising money, not having lunch with anybody. So it's not just that it's a distraction from doing the people's work. It's a distraction from even becoming an effective representative, which has got to mean a representative who learns how to work or even understands who these people are now. But I'm not sure. So I agree with that. That's, I think, a huge problem. But if you were matching funds, small contributions, you wouldn't have members of Congress calling people for $100 contributions. You would just have a different business model for raising money. Right. I mean, it could be a strategy that would liberate members because they would just be raising money in different ways. And especially my favorite is the Seattle system of vouchers, which basically says, I would phrase it being sensitive to right wing conservative concerns, I would say rebate the first $50 of your taxes, and everybody sends at least $50 to Washington, whether it's income tax or any other form of tax. Take the first $50, rebate it in the form of a voucher, and then you use that voucher to fund the candidate you want for your campaign. So it's not government directed money. It's Individual directed money and embrace your inner Tea Party. It's your money because, you know, it's our money that we send to the government. And if we did that, then the number of potential funders of campaigns would go through the roof. And, you know, obviously no member would be sitting there calling people to get a $50.

You'd have so much more skin in the game. And I don't have any ideological opposition to that. And I'm not even sure that I'm the type of Republican. And for what it's worth, I'm pretty darn conservative. I'm not sure I have ideological opposition to the idea that you can take corporate penalties and create some type of matching system that would make a fundamentally broken system. We basically couldn't redesign this part of our system to be any worse. Worse. Okay, I don't want to be just so cynical, but the truth is, the current state of the way campaigns are funded and the conflicts it creates, it couldn't actually be worse if we tried. And that's why there ought to be a willingness on both sides of the island in entering into good faith conversations and debates about how we can make this better. Because it is a dynamic in which members of Congress are often miserable. They don't like this. It is commonplace for members of Congress to loathe the part of their job that requires fundraising. So there's some incentive. Surprisingly, in this case, there actually is some incentive for members of Congress to fix this. And it would benefit themselves and certainly would give people greater confidence and it might open up more competition. One concern I have is actually my friend Dan Crenshaw brought this up. He made the point, as a Republican with quite a high profile, that the small dollar donor matching, he argued, would help him far more than it would ever help a challenger. To him, he said, I can raise less than $50 in Bukus compared to anybody who would ever run against me. I thought that was actually a fairly strong argument, particularly that we are now living in this day and age where so many members of Congress, maybe more so on my side of the aisle, people like Madison Cawthorn, they just appear to want to be social media celebrities.

Yeah, I think it's a real concern. I agree with you. And you know, the Green Party has become very vocal against HR1 because, well, it makes it harder for them to get public funding for presidential campaigns because you've got to get more initial contributions and they're fearful they won't get them. But another point they make, which is, I think, a fair point to just put on the table is the way in which it amplifies the difference in fundraising. So you raise $100,000. The six to one match means it's worth $700,000. Somebody else raises $200,000. Six to one match means that's $1.3 million. Right. So now you've taken a difference of $100,000 and you've turned it into a difference that's much more significant. And so one might be concerned that is it really helping the problem, which is why I think the alternative, the voucher system, has got to be a component if you're going to make sure that you have a much easier way to raise more money in the system and from people who haven't traditionally given. And maybe we also ought to be thinking about ways to make sure that you don't need the same amount of money. You just need and amount to become competitive so that people can hear your views. And maybe alternatives that would add to that would be helpful here. But given. So when you say what I think is absolutely right, and it's extraordinarily important that you would say it, that you couldn't break the system more than it's broken, what percentage of members of Congress you think would agree to that statement? Not publicly, but if you had them in a room and you were friendly with them, what percentage would say, yeah, that's right.

I think over half on both sides of the aisle. I think there's a lot of politicking that takes place on these issues in front of the cameras because of the way that leadership lines them up. And some of this is a trickle down effect from the very tight fisted control that Mitch McConnell has wielded on Republican willingness to even have conversations on some of these issues. But rank and file members on both sides experience the exact same things. You know, I mean, and for every member of Congress who comes into Washington with a tailwind and there was more money than you knew what to do with, there's somebody like my father who, you know, scraped and clawed to run a campaign against an incumbent Democrat and ran again a second time and won and came to Washington with a distaste for how much. This is ironic, I guess, in hindsight, but we were having this conversation the other day. One of the reasons that he became a John McCain ally and a supporter of campaign finance reform was because he had seen as a Republican running against a Democrat, that the majority of the money that the incumbent was raising and spending was PAC money. That, of course, doesn't go to a challenger.

Well, okay, so then I completely buy the leadership account of why we can't get any movements from the right in Congress about this. But then what would the strategy be that you would adopt? I mean, you're obviously engaged in the project of strategy to try to open the space up here, to allow at least the consideration by members on the right of alternative ways to fund campaigns to avoid the corrupting dependence that the swamp stories tries to account for.

Well, I should say this about leadership without just picking on them. I should explain that when you know how the process works there and when you see cradle to grave how a rank and file member of Congress becomes a majority leader or speaker in the House, you realize that the system, however broken it is, obviously worked for that person of. Okay, so the easiest person to pick on here for me is Kevin McCarthy. I don't know what Kevin McCarthy stands for. I mean, I'm a conservative Republican and I could just bend your ear all day long about why I'm a conservative and why I'm passionate about this, that and the other. But I have no idea what the Republican leader in Congress cares about personally. But I do know that he's. And I'd say this just because he was a colleague of my father's. I know that he's a prolific fundraiser. If you're a prolific fundraiser, the system works really well for you. And now there's a good chance two years from now that he may be the speaker of the House. So it really is important to understand why it is that leadership does often stand in the doorway of any meaningful reform. I think part of what you can do and ought to do, and those of us who are involved in this should appeal to the risers in American politics on either side of the aisle, so that on their ascent, even if they are great fundraisers, that they realize, or at least honest with themselves about what is pretty obvious, and that is that the system is very broken. And one of the reasons I have almost no patience for people who argue that it's not broken is that the system often, and DART money is one of the best examples of this. It often operates very clearly outside the intent of the law. I mean, our laws. Leadership going back to leadership packs. Well, the creation of leadership packs, they were not ever supposed to be slush funds. It's just that we've never cleaned up the loophole that allows them to function as slush funds.

Yeah. And you can see the incentives of why that doesn't happen. But I think that strategy is a brilliant one because I think it's not just that they don't want to be spending their time doing this. It's that they never imagined that's what being a member of Congress was. I remember this is supposed to be a secret, so nobody can repeat this, even though it's on a podcast. When Beto o' Rourke was elected to Congress, he came to Harvard because the Kennedy School runs a Congressman orientation program. And so he was being part of this project to give people information about how Congress works. And he wanted to meet because he'd become so engaged and depressed by the system of raising money. And when we met, he described the requirement that the Democratic Party had just issued to all new members of Congress about the amount of time they had to spend raising money. And they literally gave a calendar, a ideal calendar that every member should adopt, and which times during the day they should have call time, which, of course, is fundraising time, and which time they should be doing all the other stuff. And by far the most time every day was to be allocated to call time. And, you know, I could just see on his face, he was like, I never imagined that my job was to be a kind of fundraiser as a member of Congress. I thought my job was to represent my constituents or to figure out how to make policy work better or to try to make government work better. But now, if I kind of think of the next 10 years of my life as a fundraiser, it's an enormous, enormous letdown from the whole idea of being a member of Congress. Congress. So those are the people, the idealists, as they come into Congress, who it seems like we have the greatest potential to do something with. But obviously, so far, we've not found enough on both sides to.

Well, and Republicans are worse. I mean, hear me say that. It's just not even close. I mean, Republicans, especially in the last several years, with some of the loopholes, so to speak, being you can drive a RAM truck through them. I mean, it's just ridiculous now how obviously broken the system is, even in terms of, again, flouting the intention of the law. You don't have to be a lawyer, let alone a campaign finance expert, to realize this is not how the system was designed to work. And I do think we've democratized our democracy in the sense that there is a connection between certain people. This hasn't become pervasive in Congress, but if you look at the way that the AOCs and the Dan Crenshaws, they're examples I use often because they're now almost household names in political circles, but they're also millennials. And they are so much in touch on social media with the people they represent. There is, I think, some upside in the populism of the moment on both sides of the aisle, because maybe out of that we can get an admission from some of the more influential people, even in the party politics on both sides, that the system's not working. Well, I'll give you a dirty little secret. You mentioned what we refer to as the dues system, where members of Congress, based on their seniority or their committee assignment, owe their parties more money. Right. They owe the parties a certain amount of money raised every year. And this is, I think, to political watchers, this has become pretty known, I've always found. And this is just, again, this is just having learned it, lived it, watched it, I'm always surprised that one little secret of that doesn't make more sense and doesn't alarm people more than it does. So when you're raising money for the parties and let's say that you're on a lower level committee, some of these lower level committees require a quarter million dollars of fundraising. Well, if you're running for Congress and you're trying to raise a quarter million dollars, you can only raise it $2,800 at a time. That that's the maximum that can be given to a candidate's campaign committee. Well, the numbers are much bigger for the NRCC or the dccc, the partisan congressional committees, and that's who they're doing this fundraising for. That's how the system is designed. Well, those checks can be given in, I don't know, the most recent numbers to this cycle, but you're talking in denominations of 25, $50,000. So what happens that is really shocking to me. And it happens all the time. This is not one off. It happens all the time. It's one thing, in my opinion, for a member of Congress to take a $2,700 donation from this healthcare CEO back in their district. It's a whole different thing for that same member of Congress to call the same healthcare CEO and say, Hey, I need 25 grand to the Republican, to the, the National Republican Congressional Committee, because I've got to get to 250,000 and this monkey on my back is just wearing me out. I can't get anything done until I raise this money. Well, you talk about a transactional relationship. When that CEO writes the $25,000 check to then come to Washington, meet the congressman, go to the gala, really a filthy. It's condescending to the whole tradition and legacy of American government.

Right. I love that frame, the condescension of it, because, you know, what does it turn somebody into to spend half your time sucking up to powerful people for money? I mean, we want leaders, right? Is that how you produce leaders? Is that how the military produces.

Okay, this is going to become pretty cynical if you allow me, because here's what I really believe, and I come from the. This may surprise you, given my real interest in political reform, but I really learned politics. And first was, I think, inspired by the contrarian attitude and approach of Dr. Tom Coburn. So I came up in a very conservative vein of the Republican Party, but also one that doesn't drink much Kool Aid. So I believe, and I see Congress mostly through the lens of psychology. And so to your point about what kind of people does this make? Well, unfortunately, the absolute worst members of Congress. The worst types of members of Congress typically are the ones who hang around, and the very best ones are the ones who peace out early on. And I'll give you an example. I'll name names. Reed Ribble. Reed Ribble, who served three terms in Congress from Green Bay, had committed to term limits, which he honored. And that's really a profound way to treat term limits, is to commit to them on the front end and then do what you said you'd do. But he hated being a member of Congress because he was this really active citizen, generous philanthropist, small businessman online, exactly the kind of person that you want serving in Congress, a responsible citizen legislator. And he hated it because he didn't like the games, didn't like the fundraising. What didn't you know? He's from Green Bay, Wisconsin. Didn't care about being wined and dined.

Yeah, you're going to give me some of the other side. You're going to give me somebody on the other side, though.

Well, I mean, I just know my side. I enjoy picking on my side more than the other side.

No, no, no. I, I mean, no, you were going to describe people who stay there forever and people who come and go. So I agree with you about the people who come and go, people who stay forever. It's a hard. It's a harder story. I think some of them, you know, you might not like their politics, but they seem pretty clearly there for the purpose of, like, doing government service. But. But maybe some of them stay because they don't have anything else they could do, and that's.

Or just that they are obsess over politics. There's a lot of fanboys, as I call it, we've got to think a few, several of those in the south, you saw it just based on their pure allegiance to a singular person. They just didn't. There was no hesitation at all for them to pledge total allegiance and loyalty, even though it's very much out, out of, outside of the American way or even, I think it's almost incongruent to conservatism. But still, you had so many Republicans who are quick to praise the ground that Trump walked on. The reason for that is psychology, honestly. It's just that there are a lot of members of Congress who are fanboys. They love the process. They love the idea that Trump, this rich, famous guy, knew their name.

Okay, so let's shift a little bit because we only have a couple minutes left. And this is. I'm really genuinely unsure of how you're going to talk about this. And so that makes it interesting to me. So you have three kids. Imagine those three kids have kids. And so your grandkids come to you and say to you, so, Grandpa, you were a Republican in 2021. And, and the Republican president in 2021 said that the election was stolen and inspired people to march on to protest that, which led to the march on the Capitol. Explain to us, Grandpa, what was that about? How did that happen? What really was driving either him or the people who followed him? How would you explain it to your grandkids?

Well, it'll be interesting when they ask that question, because I'll tell them that I wasn't quite on the front lines of that process, but that I was there and I was involved and I knew a lot of the people who were on the front lines, and that it was the culmination of four very unusual and unpredictable years in our country when we had elevated to the highest office in the land a person who was prone to tantrums. And he, upon realizing that he had not gotten reelected through one that had generational consequences. All right. And I mean, I say all this to you in somewhat, somewhat out of respect to you and the role that you play in these things, but there's just no reason to mince words because what happened was to any of us who've spent time and on my podcast, I opened up season two by specifically talking about what transpired in Pennsylvania, specifically talking about what transpired in Georgia and then giving some contrarian examples from across the country. He told the story of a Democratic election official in Maricopa county who lost his election the same day that Biden won. It was very possibly the most secure election in American history. And again, it was a culmination of a lot of people having hitched their wagon to a man, not an ideology. And then when he started saying completely baseless things that in this case weren't just accusations, they were accusations that, you know, that undermined some of the most, or maybe the most important institution in a self governing country. Again, the ramifications are real. And I think the Republican Party is going to deal with those demons for some time because so many people went down that rabbit trail with him.

Okay, but when you open by saying you were on the front line of this, in what sense do you mean you were in the front line?

Well, just in the sense that I was a Republican who knew a lot of prominent Republicans and had a small platform of my own, and I was trying to explain to people with the platform I had that this was not real and that the, and this goes back even, you know, our, our podcast had tens of thousands of downloads. And I'm a known Republican and have run as a conservative Republican. Nearly got elected in my 20s, and I took a whole lot of heat in my home state of Tennessee for explaining to people that what the president was claiming about vote by mail prior to the election was not truthful and that the narrative that he would, that many of us were worried he was trying to create was not true. So, and then so many people, I mean, my father served on this national council, a few dozen former elected officials who banded together to try to be a nonpartisan and bipartisan voice of reason. So our family had just decided in our neck of the woods that we were going to put our reputations on the line both before, during, and in the, you know, prosecution, if you will, of the election, that, that everything seemed normal. And then in the aftermath, that it was not only normal, but the election went off without as much as a hitch.

Yeah, so, but, but it's still so, so playing the role of your grandkid was. I don't get is how people, so many people. I understand Donald Trump. I mean, I don't understand Donald Trump, but I understand why Donald Trump would say the things that he did. But why would so many people repeat them and put their reputation on the lines having repeated them? I mean, so what percentage, for example, of the dozens and dozens of Republicans who voted for questioning the results, do you think actually believe that the election was stolen? Do you think none of them believed it? Do you think all of them believed it? What do you think the actual belief was in their heads?

Well, to answer that, Question honestly. For example, all seven Republicans in the Tennessee congressional delegation voted to reject the will of the people. I don't think all seven of those people think that Trump actually won the election. I do think all seven of those people are, on some level, fearful of the Trump family. Okay. And at that point, the president and his family members had begun to take names and make threats about coming, forming primaries. Everybody had a different calculation. People used different excuses. My incumbent congressman basically used the excuse that the majority of his. I don't know if he had done polling, but he. He claimed that the majority of his constituents believed that the election was in fact, fraudulent. And I think some of them thought there were issues here or there, questions that ought to be answered. But again, even when it came to January 6, there were no objections on the grounds of fraud. There were only objections based on these arcane, minuscule process changes due to the pandemic. Nobody really believes there was fraud. I have a hard time believing they really believe in their heart of hearts there was fraud or else the Madison Cawthorns of the world would show it to us, wouldn't they?

Yeah. And as listeners, this podcast know, even if you believe there was a problem in the changes in the states, the promise Congress made through the Electoral Count act was so long as the states have a process for resolving contests, and they have resolved them six days before the Electoral College votes, and there's only one slate of electors, Congress promises to count those electoral votes. There's no ground for objection. Even if you think I could have done a better job in the state of Pennsylvania, convincing Pennsylvania courts to throw out the changes that were made in light of the pandemic, you had no right to act on that. As a member of Congress, when the law says the only basis you can complain of is that the vote was not regularly taken, whereby the vote. They're referring to the Electoral College members votes, not the votes of the people. So what's striking is there's no basis either in law or in fact, and yet such an astonishing number of members did that. But here's. So that's very revealing, and I think it's probably true. There were just fear. I think we should distinguish many of those people who marched on the Capitol. I mean, those people, actually, I think many of them did believe the election was stolen. And I think it's a genuine question, like, if you do believe your election has been stolen, you do believe that, you know, criminal activity has defeated the object of democracy, what is the appropriate response? What is a patriot supposed to do in that context, you know, because we were very much engaged in gaming out the other way. It could have been stolen, you know, which. Which, you know, Donald Trump called on Michael Pen, Mike Pence to throw the election on election day on January 6, by counting different slates of electors in the name of whatever that would have been the election stolen. You know, when somebody says to me, what should you do if that happens? I'm not sure I would have disagreed with what many of those people did, believing the election was stolen. But that then points back to the people responsible for creating that falsehood or the, you know, the cowardice of so many to stand up and say, look, I love Donald Trump. He's. He's my president, and I wish he had been reelected, but he wasn't. And we can't perpetrate this idea that he was, because something is bigger than Donald Trump. He doesn't see that. But there is something bigger. It's called democracy.

What's deeply frustrating to a conservative like me is that there was such a clear and convincing conservative argument, and you laid it out that, you know, the way that we read the Constitution and the way that tradition has it, we leave to the states to certify their electors. And it's funny, even, you know, the Washington Post, New York Times, everybody under the sun was kept using the word certify, referring to Congress's role on January 6th. But it was issue one's executive director, Meredith McGehee, who told me and others who were speaking publicly, be very careful. You know, the word used in the Constitution is count. Congress doesn't certify anything. So it was. So the people like Chip Roy, Dan Crenshaw, some of the most conservative members of Congress were saying, guys, even if you think the election was rigged, there's not a constitutional role for Congress to do anything about it.

Yes, exactly right. That was incredibly depressing. Well, I'm sorry we've not found a really aggressive way to disagree because our role types tell us we're supposed to disagree. But I have found this to be an extremely enlightening and helpful conversation to help map out how we might work on what we do agree on, which is obviously to find a way to make this democracy again responsive and representative. And there's a lot more work to be done. So thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me about this, Weston, and I'm grateful for your work.

Yeah, well, thank you. I try to avoid, and was taught to avoid sports analogies as they apply to politics or sometimes they don't apply so well. But Nick Penniman, issue once founder, who you've spoken to, often describes this work as creating as a football field that needs to to be well taken care of. And both teams have an interest in the field being well manicured. And I think that's why you and I find more common ground than not.

Yes, that's a great way to think about it. Okay, thank you very much. That's our conversation. Here's a reflection. You know, in many ways, I think the fundamental divide in American politics is between people who view citizens as equal and people who don't. I don't mean they're necessarily racist, they're necessarily oligarchs. They just don't think everybody has or should have an equal place in our representative democracy. And there's so many policy fights that we have that really are explained by that basic difference. Do you think everyone's an equal citizen or don't you? And among Republicans, my own view is that many, and in the ordinary non professional politician space, practically all, or let's say a significant majority if asked, would say they believe citizens are equal. And when you say to them, do you support the idea of a political party using their power in a state to make it harder for the other political party to compete? It would be very hard for them to say yes because they don't believe it. They don't believe it, but other people do. The striking feature of our current political reality that there has arisen again an idea that was with America from the founding and was quashed in many ways by the Voting Rights act of 1965. The idea that says, yes, there are different kinds of people. There are people who are entitled to govern and there's everyone else, whether they're the, quote, mudsills, which was the word that referred to people who were at the bottom of society and should stay at the bottom of society, or people on the basis of their sex, or people on the basis of their race, or people on the basis of whatever. I think we'd do a lot if we surfaced this difference in attitudes more regularly because we'd at least find a way to know with whom we can find common ground. This conversation with Weston Wamp, I think is a good example of that. Weston's a conservative. He repeated that many times. He said he's very conservative. We didn't get into what that means. But in the answers he gave, the problems he described the remedies he entertained, their critique of January 6th. Never once was there the suggestion that the system is appropriate because citizens are not equal. There's political constraints on the capacity of people on the right, especially given the leadership in Congress to take up the reforms that are necessary. But the reforms that are necessary are not things we disagree about. And if we don't disagree about them, that's because both sides, at least when they're represented by people like Weston and I, both sides would say citizens are equal and they deserve the dignity that equality demands. We don't have that equality in our system right now. If you go to my medium page, you can see a post about another minoritarian nation. It's a post as well as a presentation, a video presentation at TEDx Talk. But the basic argument is we come from a precariously majoritarian representative democracy. Historically, we've been pretty good at reflecting the majority in the control of government, but precariously so because of the Senate, because of the Electoral College, and because of gerrymandering in the states. But the changes that are happening right now in the states, the changes that would suppress the ability of people to vote easily or as easily as others, and the gerrymandering that the Census 2020 Census will empower, will give states the ability to entrench a system that practically assures minority government. We will go from a precariously majoritarian representative democracy to a predictably minoritarian representative democracy. Predictably minoritarian. Because predictably, given the structures of our representative democracy, more Republicans will be elected than the vote for Republicans evinces. Now, to identify that sounds partisan. To complain about that sounds partisan indeed. Astonishingly, I was asked to make this presentation to TEDx and I presented it. And then TEDx refuses to put it on their network because it sounds too partisan. But it shouldn't be a partisan question whether we are a majoritarian democracy. That is not a partisan question. And if you're from a party that doesn't believe that in a democracy the majority should win, you should ask yourselves, are you actually a representative Democrat? Do you believe in a republic? Because that's what's at stake here. If we can't find a way to assure that in elective politics, I'm not talking about minority rights protected by the Court, I'm talking about elective politics. If we can't make sure that the party or person who gets the most votes gets to govern, we will have lost the capacity for this representative democracy to function. The Court's not going to save it for us. This Supreme Court? Hell no. This Supreme Court, whenever the challenge to unrepresentativeness has been raised, this Supreme Court has said, no problem when people challenged voter ID rules which were justified on the basis of vote fraud. But of course, when the data was reviewed, there is no vote fraud. The Supreme Court said, well, it's good enough justification even though it disenfranchises hundreds of thousands of voters. When Common Cause challenged partisan gerrymandering, which after 2012 was the most extreme in states like North Carolina, Pennsylvania, maybe Maryland, although Maryland's a hard state to draw districts in a different way for the Supreme Court looked at it and said, oops, too political for us to deal with. Partisan gerrymandering will not be constrained by the Supreme Court in every one of these contexts where rules are being erected to make it so the minority controls government. The Supreme Court has said, we're not going to do anything about it. The only time the Supreme Court has done something about it, the Supreme Court has embedded minoritarian government. When Congress tried to address the power of big money in elections, both in the original act, which was struck down in large part by the Supreme Court in Buckley versus Vallejo and then in Citizens United, which then in the District of Columbia Circuit Court was rendered a in the speech now case became the defense of super PACs. The argument that the majority should have the ability to make sure that this tiny minority of super wealthy don't have extraordinary influence over our members, that our members are not dependent on them. The Supreme Court said, no, the First Amendment requires minoritarianism in that context. So the Supreme Court is not going to help us here. The only thing that can help us is If Congress passes HR1, which just this week will have the sister bill in The Senate called S1, which is the most important democracy reform package considered and passed by the House since the Voting Rights act of 1965. Now, HR1 is something we've talked about a lot. If you're not signed up, you should be signed up to our substack. You can find that at Equal Citizens. US Substack is this really powerful tool to distribute news and information in a convenient and well packaged way. And we are gathering every bit of news that we can about HR1 and how it should matter. So you should go and you should sign up and follow the progress of HR1. But you need to join the fight to make sure HR1 passes. And we need to make sure it passes without proving Chenky garbage is right. Okay, so you know Cenk, I hope. Cenk is the founder of the Young Turks and he's an incredible broadcast personality. Well, cable broadcast or Internet broadcast, but an extraordinary person, a friend of mine for many years. My book Republic Laws opens with a quote where Chenk says, the only issue in America is money and politics. Cenk had me on his show last week, and on his show Chang said he bets that the Democrats remove the money in Politics part of HR1 when it passes through the Senate. And he bets that because he very cynically believes that in fact the Democrats have come to love the current system as much as the Republicans traditionally have. And that rather than disarming, now that they've perfected the ability to raise money, now that they control the government and the spigots have been turned on and hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars are pouring into the coffers of Democrats rather than turning that off by adopting a system for funding campaigns that requires you go out to ordinary people and get them to help fund your campaigns, he thinks the Democrats are going to step back and say, well, voting rights and gerrymandering, that's important, but we'll have to deal with money and politics later. That will be incredibly depressing if Cenk is right. So we have to prove him wrong. And we have to prove him wrong by convincing everyone, really it is a fight convincing everyone that democracy reform has got to address every, every issue together. Democracy reform has got to pick up the gerrymandering problem, the vote suppression problem, the money in politics problem. Those three have got to be part of it. And HR1 addresses all three. Not perfectly. I'm an academic. My job is to quibble. I could quibble with each of those reforms, but 10,000 times better than the system we have right now. And in addition to those three core elements, there's vote security, there's transparency rules, there's ethics rules for the Supreme Court. For the first time in history, the Supreme Court will have an ethics rules applied to them, to the President, a much stricter effort to limit revolving door. And the same thing in Congress. Bizarrely, the House of Representatives still allows members to sit on corporate boards. What the hell is that about? HR1 would eliminate that. And the final title, Title 10 would require presidential candidates to do what every candidate before Trump did. Turn over your taxes. If you want to be a candidate and comply with federal election laws, it is an extraordinarily important bill. You've got to do something to make sure it passes. If you want to know what you should do, sign up for our substack and we'll tell you what to do. But not just us end Citizens United has been at the forefront fighting for this. Represent us has been at the forefront fighting for this. Join someone. Equal citizens. Represent U.S. n Citizens United. Join someone and do something to make sure this passes. I've spent almost 15 years of my life fighting for this. 15 years. My kids are almost in college, for God's sake. Let's get this done. Let's get this done so we can get on to the really critically important issues that America must address, but won't address until we address this corruption first. Okay, End of sermon. I'm grateful that you listen. I'm grateful for what you do. If you have ideas for what we should do to help make this pass or ideas for this podcast, go to Equal Citizens Us Anotherway and give us your ideas. Or you can find a place there to share these podcasts. And sharing is what we need right now. Thanks very much. Until the next episode, this is Larry Lessig.