Thursday, September 3, 2015

...and Larry Lessig, you're no Eugene McCarthy

Because, in 1968, Eugene McCarthy had rich guys like Stewart Mott, unhindered by campaign finance laws, to fund his campaign against sitting President LBJ and his Vietnam War. While Lessig wants even more restrictions on how Presidential candidates can fund their Quixoticism. John Samples talks about that irony here with Cato's Caleb O. Brown.
In 1967 Democratic Senator Eugene McCarthy entered the primary here in New Hampshire to challenge his own party’s sitting president because he feared the most important moral issue of the time, the Vietnam War, was going to be invisible in that election. In four months McCarthy went from almost nothing in the polls to almost beating Lyndon Johnson in the primary and the one issue that no one wanted to talk about became the one issue that no one could ignore.
Says Larry Lessig today without seeming to realize that McCarthy couldn't get away with that today. Today, we're into believing there's too much money in politics.

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