Republic, Lost_ How Money Corrupts Congress--And a Plan to Stop It - Lawrence Lessig [6]
I will always remember that image. As with waking up to the Challenger disaster or watching the reports of Bobby Kennedy’s assassination, I can remember those first moments almost as clearly as if they were happening now. And I vividly remember thinking about the extraordinary figure that Yeltsin was: bravely challenging in the name of freedom a coup that if successful—and on August 19 there was no reason to doubt it would be—would certainly result in the execution of this increasingly idolized defender of the people.
Every other player in that mix seemed tainted or compromised, Gorbachev especially. And compromise (what life at the Court had shown me) was exactly what the month away was to allow me to escape. So at that moment, Yeltsin was the focus for me. Here was a man who could be for Russia what George Washington had been for America. History had given him the opportunity to join its exclusive club. It had taken some initial courage for him to climb on, but on August 19, 1991, I couldn’t imagine how he could do anything other than ride this opportunity to its inevitable end. If democracy seemed possible for the former Soviets, it seemed possible only because it would have a voice through the rough and angry Yeltsin.
That’s not, of course, how the story played out. No doubt Yeltsin’s position was impossibly difficult. But over the balance of the 1990s, the heroic Yeltsin became a joke. Perhaps unfairly—and certainly unfairly at the beginning, since his real troubles with alcohol began only after he became Russia’s president1—he was increasingly viewed as a drunk. After his first summit with Yeltsin, Clinton became convinced that his addiction was “more than a sporting problem.”2 The public didn’t even learn about the most incredible incident until two years ago: on a visit to Washington to meet with Clinton, Yeltsin was found by the Secret Service on a D.C. street in the predawn hours, dressed only in underwear, trying in vain to flag down a taxi to take him to get pizza.3 Yeltsin fumbled his chance at history, all because of the lure of the bottle.
As clearly as I remember watching him on that tank on August 19, I remember thinking, over the balance of that decade, about the special kind of bathos that Yeltsin betrayed. He was handed a chance to save Russia from authoritarians. Yet even this gift wasn’t enough to inspire him to stay straight.
Yeltsin is a type: a particular, and tragic, character type. No doubt a good soul, he wanted and worked to do good for his nation. But he failed, in part because of a dependency that conflicted with his duty to his nation. We can’t hate him. We could possibly feel sorry for him. And we should certainly feel sorry for the millions who lost the chance of a certain kind of free society because of this man’s dependency.
Such characters and such dependencies, however, are not limited to individuals. Institutions can suffer them, too. Not because the individuals within the institutions are themselves addicted to some drug or to alcohol. Maybe they are. No doubt many are. That’s not my point. Instead, an institution can be corrupted in the same way Yeltsin was when individuals within that institution become dependent upon an influence that distracts them from the intended purpose of the institution. The distracting dependency corrupts the institution.
Consider an obvious case.
A doctor at a medical school teaches students how to treat a certain condition. That treatment involves a choice among a number of drugs. Those drugs are produced by a number of competing drug companies. One of those companies begins to offer the doctor speaking opportunities—relatively well paid, and with reliable regularity. The doctor begins to depend upon this income. She buys a fancier car, or a vacation house on a lake. And while there’s no agreement, express or implied, about the doctor’s recommending