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would be collected, and posted, and made available for critique. And as they demonstrated their own sensibility, they would support the push for states to call upon Congress to remove the shadow from these conventions. Congress would then constitute a federal convention. That convention—if my bet proves correct—would be populated by a random selection of citizens drawn from the voter rolls. That convention would then meet, deliberate, and propose new amendments to the Constitution. Congress would refer those amendments out to the states for their ratification.

And so, again, what’s the chance this might work? I think, comparatively, quite good: with enough entrepreneurial state representatives, let’s say 10 percent at a minimum.

CHAPTER 21

Choosing Strategies

I’ve outlined four strategies for effecting the change we need. None are likely to succeed alone. But which makes the most sense? And why should we pursue any of them if none are likely to succeed?

To understand the challenge, we need to keep the enemy in focus and understand how it will react. As the movement to kill the system of dependence that is D.C. grows, the resistance will grow as well. There are too many people whose livelihoods depend upon the status quo. Some of them would be happy to see the system change. Most will fight like hell to protect it.

So, what does that fact say about the best strategy to defeat the status quo?

Insurgent movements have to fight the war on unconventional turf. If the issue gets decided finally within institutions that depend upon things staying the same, things will stay the same. But if we can move the battle outside the Beltway, to venues where the status quo has no natural advantage, then even small forces can effect big change.

That’s the advantage to the three unconventional strategies. Each of them—running nonpolitician candidates, running reform presidential candidates, calling for an Article V convention—is something that hasn’t happened before. The structures for controlling what happens in American politics haven’t developed to control these contexts. Thus, the chance to evade the power of the status quo is greater with these three. And if I had the power to launch this war, I would launch it by launching all three at once.

Even then, however, the chances are still not great. We’ve had small examples of status quo defeats, but certainly nothing as big as dislodging the power of K Street. Any sane soul who looked at this cause would have to conclude that the odds are overwhelmingly against us. So, why do it? Why waste your time?

I was asked this question quite pointedly once, after a lecture at Dartmouth. “What’s the point?” the sympathetic listener asked. “It all seems so hopeless.”

And for the first time in my life, in the middle of a public lecture, I was so choked by emotion that I thought I had to stop. For the picture that came into my head as I struggled for a response to this fair yet devastating question was the image of my (then) six-year-old boy, and the thought, the horror, of a doctor’s telling me that he had terminal cancer and that “there was nothing to be done.” I painted that picture to that Dartmouth audience. And I then asked this: “Would you give up? Would you do nothing?”

Because of course I understand the futility in fighting. Of course I can read the odds—I typed them, by hand! I feel the dismissive impatience of those inside the system whenever I talk about changing the system. I can almost feel them roll their eyes as they hear about a fight to change the status quo.

But I also know love. And I know what love says to the rational. Love makes the odds irrelevant. It is a commitment to doing whatever can be done—sometimes destructively so—to beat the odds and save the soul who taught you that love.

We forgive this irrationality, especially when it comes to kids. Indeed, we celebrate it. Think of the story of John and Aileen Crowley (retold in the 2010 film Extraordinary Measures), who did everything humanly possible to drive research for a cure to the disease that doomed