Larry Lessig isn’t running

In an effort to better face the grim realities of my 1L workload, I’ve set my RSS reader to only update every 48 hours. So I just saw the news that Larry Lessig isn’t running for Congress. I have to say I’m really glad to see it: for the last week, since he announced his exploratory committee, I felt like the only person who hadn’t drank the Kool-Aid.

I love the Change Congress initiative. But as nearly as I can tell, it hasn’t really gotten off the ground (even change-congress.org has yet to launch). While jumping into the special election would have gained the nascent movement cheap publicity, it would come at the cost of credibility once Lessig lost. Forced to fundraise before he could ever publicize his anti-special interest message, that message might be dramatically undercut before the word ever got out. Even if he could win, the life of a freshman Congressman doesn’t admit much time for the kind of management that Prof. Lessig would need to do to grow his organization. Just like his earlier project, Creative Commons, I think he could be most effective as a professor, not a politician.

(While we’re on the subject of cheap publicity for the Change Congress movement, though, well, last week’s evidence indicates that a move back to Harvard would do the trick…)