0:00:00.643,0:00:03.535
Once upon a time,

0:00:03.535,0:00:06.975
there was a place called Lesterland.

0:00:06.975,0:00:09.930
Now Lesterland looks a lot like the United States.

0:00:09.930,0:00:14.667
Like the United States, it has about 311 million people,

0:00:14.667,0:00:17.005
and of that 311 million people,

0:00:17.005,0:00:21.888
it turns out 144,000 are called Lester.

0:00:21.888,0:00:23.016
If Matt's in the audience,

0:00:23.016,0:00:25.706
I just borrowed that, I'll return it in a second,

0:00:25.706,0:00:28.371
this character from your series.

0:00:28.371,0:00:30.794
So 144,000 are called Lester,

0:00:30.794,0:00:35.074
which means about .05 percent is named Lester.

0:00:35.074,0:00:38.802
Now, Lesters in Lesterland have this extraordinary power.

0:00:38.802,0:00:41.965
There are two elections every election cycle in Lesterland.

0:00:41.965,0:00:44.178
One is called the general election.

0:00:44.178,0:00:47.519
The other is called the Lester election.

0:00:47.519,0:00:50.504
And in the general election, it's the citizens who get to vote,

0:00:50.504,0:00:53.776
but in the Lester election, it's the Lesters who get to vote.

0:00:53.776,0:00:54.910
And here's the trick.

0:00:54.910,0:00:58.561
In order to run in the general election,

0:00:58.561,0:01:01.107
you must do extremely well

0:01:01.107,0:01:02.480
in the Lester election.

0:01:02.480,0:01:05.581
You don't necessarily have to win, but you must do extremely well.

0:01:05.581,0:01:09.531
Now, what can we say about democracy in Lesterland?

0:01:09.531,0:01:10.924
What we can say, number one,

0:01:10.924,0:01:13.560
as the Supreme Court said in Citizens United,

0:01:13.560,0:01:17.838
that people have the ultimate influence over elected officials,

0:01:17.838,0:01:20.486
because, after all, there is a general election,

0:01:20.486,0:01:23.438
but only after the Lesters have had their way

0:01:23.438,0:01:26.940
with the candidates who wish to run in the general election.

0:01:26.940,0:01:30.543
And number two, obviously, this dependence upon the Lesters

0:01:30.543,0:01:33.305
is going to produce a subtle, understated,

0:01:33.305,0:01:35.734
we could say camouflaged, bending

0:01:35.734,0:01:38.925
to keep the Lesters happy.

0:01:38.925,0:01:42.194
Okay, so we have a democracy, no doubt,

0:01:42.194,0:01:43.870
but it's dependent upon the Lesters

0:01:43.870,0:01:45.880
and dependent upon the people.

0:01:45.880,0:01:48.522
It has competing dependencies,

0:01:48.522,0:01:50.932
we could say conflicting dependencies,

0:01:50.932,0:01:55.202
depending upon who the Lesters are.

0:01:55.202,0:01:57.546
Okay. That's Lesterland.

0:01:57.546,0:02:00.305
Now there are three things I want you to see now that I've described Lesterland.

0:02:00.305,0:02:03.546
Number one, the United States is Lesterland.

0:02:03.546,0:02:05.422
The United States is Lesterland.

0:02:05.422,0:02:07.803
The United States also looks like this, also has two elections,

0:02:07.803,0:02:10.942
one we called the general election,

0:02:10.942,0:02:14.186
the second we should call the money election.

0:02:14.186,0:02:16.352
In the general election, it's the citizens who get to vote,

0:02:16.352,0:02:18.946
if you're over 18, in some states if you have an ID.

0:02:18.946,0:02:22.162
In the money election, it's the funders who get to vote,

0:02:22.162,0:02:24.922
the funders who get to vote, and just like in Lesterland,

0:02:24.922,0:02:27.081
the trick is, to run in the general election,

0:02:27.081,0:02:29.901
you must do extremely well in the money election.

0:02:29.901,0:02:32.522
You don't necessarily have to win. There is Jerry Brown.

0:02:32.522,0:02:35.074
But you must do extremely well.

0:02:35.074,0:02:39.602
And here's the key: There are just as few relevant funders

0:02:39.602,0:02:45.091
in USA-land as there are Lesters in Lesterland.

0:02:45.091,0:02:46.995
Now you say, really?

0:02:46.995,0:02:50.138
Really .05 percent?

0:02:50.138,0:02:52.354
Well, here are the numbers from 2010:

0:02:52.354,0:02:54.650
.26 percent of America

0:02:54.650,0:02:57.386
gave 200 dollars or more to any federal candidate,

0:02:57.386,0:03:01.850
.05 percent gave the maximum amount to any federal candidate,

0:03:01.850,0:03:05.282
.01 percent -- the one percent of the one percent --

0:03:05.282,0:03:08.490
gave 10,000 dollars or more to federal candidates,

0:03:08.490,0:03:11.566
and in this election cycle, my favorite statistic

0:03:11.566,0:03:15.421
is .000042 percent

0:03:15.421,0:03:19.458
— for those of you doing the numbers, you know that's 132 Americans —

0:03:19.458,0:03:23.418
gave 60 percent of the Super PAC money spent

0:03:23.418,0:03:26.168
in the cycle we have just seen ending.

0:03:26.168,0:03:28.898
So I'm just a lawyer, I look at this range of numbers,

0:03:28.898,0:03:30.607
and I say it's fair for me to say

0:03:30.607,0:03:34.858
it's .05 percent who are our relevant funders in America.

0:03:34.858,0:03:38.160
In this sense, the funders are our Lesters.

0:03:38.160,0:03:41.660
Now, what can we say about this democracy in USA-land?

0:03:41.660,0:03:44.002
Well, as the Supreme Court said in Citizens United,

0:03:44.002,0:03:46.839
we could say, of course the people have the ultimate influence

0:03:46.839,0:03:50.868
over the elected officials. We have a general election,

0:03:50.868,0:03:54.077
but only after the funders have had their way

0:03:54.077,0:03:58.240
with the candidates who wish to run in that general election.

0:03:58.240,0:04:00.763
And number two, obviously,

0:04:00.763,0:04:03.035
this dependence upon the funders

0:04:03.035,0:04:06.967
produces a subtle, understated, camouflaged bending

0:04:06.967,0:04:09.604
to keep the funders happy.

0:04:09.604,0:04:12.648
Candidates for Congress and members of Congress

0:04:12.648,0:04:16.931
spend between 30 and 70 percent of their time

0:04:16.931,0:04:19.107
raising money to get back to Congress

0:04:19.107,0:04:20.882
or to get their party back into power,

0:04:20.882,0:04:24.307
and the question we need to ask is, what does it do to them,

0:04:24.307,0:04:26.424
these humans, as they spend their time

0:04:26.424,0:04:29.843
behind the telephone, calling people they've never met,

0:04:29.843,0:04:33.311
but calling the tiniest slice of the one percent?

0:04:33.311,0:04:35.679
As anyone would, as they do this,

0:04:35.679,0:04:39.527
they develop a sixth sense, a constant awareness

0:04:39.527,0:04:42.867
about how what they do might affect their ability to raise money.

0:04:42.867,0:04:44.283
They become, in the words of "The X-Files,"

0:04:44.283,0:04:47.727
shape-shifters, as they constantly adjust their views

0:04:47.727,0:04:50.589
in light of what they know will help them to raise money,

0:04:50.589,0:04:52.158
not on issues one to 10,

0:04:52.158,0:04:55.253
but on issues 11 to 1,000.

0:04:55.253,0:04:56.967
Leslie Byrne, a Democrat from Virginia,

0:04:56.967,0:04:58.577
describes that when she went to Congress,

0:04:58.577,0:05:02.502
she was told by a colleague, "Always lean to the green."

0:05:02.502,0:05:04.138
Then to clarify, she went on,

0:05:04.138,0:05:08.832
"He was not an environmentalist." (Laughter)

0:05:08.832,0:05:10.912
So here too we have a democracy,

0:05:10.912,0:05:12.927
a democracy dependent upon the funders

0:05:12.927,0:05:14.714
and dependent upon the people,

0:05:14.714,0:05:16.851
competing dependencies,

0:05:16.851,0:05:18.870
possibly conflicting dependencies

0:05:18.870,0:05:22.481
depending upon who the funders are.

0:05:22.481,0:05:25.242
Okay, the United States is Lesterland, point number one.

0:05:25.242,0:05:27.253
Here's point number two.

0:05:27.253,0:05:30.035
The United States is worse than Lesterland,

0:05:30.035,0:05:32.916
worse than Lesterland because you can imagine in Lesterland

0:05:32.916,0:05:35.268
if we Lesters got a letter from the government that said,

0:05:35.268,0:05:38.532
"Hey, you get to pick who gets to run in the general election,"

0:05:38.532,0:05:42.683
we would think maybe of a kind of aristocracy of Lesters.

0:05:42.683,0:05:44.972
You know, there are Lesters from every part of social society.

0:05:44.972,0:05:47.620
There are rich Lesters, poor Lesters, black Lesters, white Lesters,

0:05:47.620,0:05:50.348
not many women Lesters, but put that to the side for one second.

0:05:50.348,0:05:52.476
We have Lesters from everywhere. We could think,

0:05:52.476,0:05:55.484
"What could we do to make Lesterland better?"

0:05:55.484,0:06:00.259
It's at least possible the Lesters would act for the good of Lesterland.

0:06:00.259,0:06:03.502
But in our land, in this land, in USA-land,

0:06:03.502,0:06:06.125
there are certainly some sweet Lesters out there,

0:06:06.125,0:06:08.097
many of them in this room here today,

0:06:08.097,0:06:12.581
but the vast majority of Lesters act for the Lesters,

0:06:12.581,0:06:16.969
because the shifting coalitions that are comprising the .05 percent

0:06:16.969,0:06:19.094
are not comprising it for the public interest.

0:06:19.094,0:06:23.486
It's for their private interest. In this sense, the USA is worse than Lesterland.

0:06:23.486,0:06:25.907
And finally, point number three:

0:06:25.907,0:06:28.854
Whatever one wants to say about Lesterland,

0:06:28.854,0:06:31.158
against the background of its history, its traditions,

0:06:31.158,0:06:36.101
in our land, in USA-land, Lesterland is a corruption,

0:06:36.101,0:06:37.574
a corruption.

0:06:37.574,0:06:41.597
Now, by corruption I don't mean brown paper bag cash

0:06:41.597,0:06:43.465
secreted among members of Congress.

0:06:43.465,0:06:46.525
I don't mean Rod Blagojevich sense of corruption.

0:06:46.525,0:06:48.430
I don't mean any criminal act.

0:06:48.430,0:06:51.821
The corruption I'm talking about is perfectly legal.

0:06:51.821,0:06:56.874
It's a corruption relative to the framers' baseline for this republic.

0:06:56.874,0:07:00.369
The framers gave us what they called a republic,

0:07:00.369,0:07:04.551
but by a republic they meant a representative democracy,

0:07:04.551,0:07:07.738
and by a representative democracy, they meant a government,

0:07:07.738,0:07:10.717
as Madison put it in Federalist 52, that would have a branch

0:07:10.717,0:07:15.662
that would be dependent upon the people alone.

0:07:15.662,0:07:16.677
So here's the model of government.

0:07:16.677,0:07:19.282
They have the people and the government

0:07:19.282,0:07:21.715
with this exclusive dependency,

0:07:21.715,0:07:25.818
but the problem here is that Congress has evolved a different dependence,

0:07:25.818,0:07:28.491
no longer a dependence upon the people alone,

0:07:28.491,0:07:30.920
increasingly a dependence upon the funders.

0:07:30.920,0:07:34.058
Now this is a dependence too,

0:07:34.058,0:07:37.922
but it's different and conflicting from a dependence upon the people alone

0:07:37.922,0:07:42.228
so long as the funders are not the people.

0:07:42.228,0:07:44.491
This is a corruption.

0:07:44.491,0:07:46.991
Now, there's good news and bad news about this corruption.

0:07:46.991,0:07:49.355
One bit of good news is that it's bipartisan,

0:07:49.355,0:07:51.525
equal-opportunity corruption.

0:07:51.525,0:07:56.178
It blocks the left on a whole range of issues that we on the left really care about.

0:07:56.178,0:07:58.650
It blocks the right too, as it makes

0:07:58.650,0:08:02.570
principled arguments of the right increasingly impossible.

0:08:02.570,0:08:04.762
So the right wants smaller government.

0:08:04.762,0:08:07.458
When Al Gore was Vice President, his team had an idea

0:08:07.458,0:08:11.370
for deregulating a significant portion of the telecommunications industry.

0:08:11.370,0:08:14.050
The chief policy man took this idea to Capitol Hill,

0:08:14.050,0:08:16.083
and as he reported back to me,

0:08:16.083,0:08:18.282
the response was, "Hell no!

0:08:18.282,0:08:20.058
If we deregulate these guys,

0:08:20.058,0:08:23.816
how are we going to raise money from them?"

0:08:23.816,0:08:27.623
This is a system that's designed to save the status quo,

0:08:27.623,0:08:31.256
including the status quo of big and invasive government.

0:08:31.256,0:08:33.706
It works against the left and the right,

0:08:33.706,0:08:35.252
and that, you might say, is good news.

0:08:35.252,0:08:37.041
But here's the bad news.

0:08:37.041,0:08:40.944
It's a pathological, democracy-destroying corruption,

0:08:40.944,0:08:43.200
because in any system

0:08:43.200,0:08:45.100
where the members are dependent upon

0:08:45.100,0:08:48.272
the tiniest fraction of us for their election,

0:08:48.272,0:08:51.064
that means the tiniest number of us,

0:08:51.064,0:08:53.344
the tiniest, tiniest number of us,

0:08:53.344,0:08:55.055
can block reform.

0:08:55.055,0:08:57.953
I know that should have been, like, a rock or something.

0:08:57.953,0:08:59.990
I can only find cheese. I'm sorry. So there it is.

0:08:59.990,0:09:02.384
Block reform.

0:09:02.384,0:09:06.360
Because there is an economy here, an economy of influence,

0:09:06.360,0:09:08.914
an economy with lobbyists at the center

0:09:08.914,0:09:11.568
which feeds on polarization.

0:09:11.568,0:09:13.417
It feeds on dysfunction.

0:09:13.417,0:09:16.056
The worse that it is for us,

0:09:16.056,0:09:19.992
the better that it is for this fundraising.

0:09:19.992,0:09:23.104
Henry David Thoreau: "There are a thousand hacking

0:09:23.104,0:09:27.976
at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."

0:09:27.976,0:09:31.369
This is the root.

0:09:31.369,0:09:35.512
Okay, now, every single one of you knows this.

0:09:35.512,0:09:39.141
You couldn't be here if you didn't know this, yet you ignore it.

0:09:39.141,0:09:42.725
You ignore it. This is an impossible problem.

0:09:42.725,0:09:45.273
You focus on the possible problems,

0:09:45.273,0:09:48.536
like eradicating polio from the world,

0:09:48.536,0:09:51.670
or taking an image of every single street across the globe,

0:09:51.670,0:09:54.976
or building the first real universal translator,

0:09:54.976,0:09:58.578
or building a fusion factory in your garage.

0:09:58.578,0:10:01.496
These are the manageable problems, so you ignore —

0:10:01.496,0:10:07.128
(Laughter) (Applause) —

0:10:07.128,0:10:09.577
so you ignore this corruption.

0:10:09.577,0:10:15.047
But we cannot ignore this corruption anymore.

0:10:15.047,0:10:18.152
(Applause)

0:10:18.152,0:10:21.735
We need a government that works.

0:10:21.735,0:10:24.600
And not works for the left or the right,

0:10:24.600,0:10:27.064
but works for the left and the right,

0:10:27.064,0:10:29.096
the citizens of the left and right,

0:10:29.096,0:10:32.688
because there is no sensible reform possible

0:10:32.688,0:10:35.217
until we end this corruption.

0:10:35.217,0:10:39.402
So I want you to take hold, to grab the issue you care the most about.

0:10:39.402,0:10:41.962
Climate change is mine, but it might be financial reform

0:10:41.962,0:10:44.330
or a simpler tax system or inequality.

0:10:44.330,0:10:46.518
Grab that issue, sit it down in front of you,

0:10:46.518,0:10:50.359
look straight in its eyes, and tell it there is no Christmas this year.

0:10:50.359,0:10:52.185
There will never be a Christmas.

0:10:52.185,0:10:54.897
We will never get your issue solved

0:10:54.897,0:10:57.863
until we fix this issue first.

0:10:57.863,0:11:01.193
So it's not that mine is the most important issue. It's not.

0:11:01.193,0:11:05.369
Yours is the most important issue, but mine is the first issue,

0:11:05.369,0:11:08.090
the issue we have to solve before we get to fix

0:11:08.090,0:11:10.063
the issues you care about.

0:11:10.063,0:11:13.361
No sensible reform, and we cannot afford

0:11:13.361,0:11:17.282
a world, a future, with no sensible reform.

0:11:17.282,0:11:20.153
Okay. So how do we do it?

0:11:20.153,0:11:23.641
Turns out, the analytics here are easy, simple.

0:11:23.641,0:11:26.491
If the problem is members spending an extraordinary

0:11:26.491,0:11:29.651
amount of time fundraising from the tiniest slice of America,

0:11:29.651,0:11:33.911
the solution is to have them spend less time fundraising

0:11:33.911,0:11:36.579
but fundraise from a wider slice of Americans,

0:11:36.579,0:11:37.752
to spread it out,

0:11:37.752,0:11:41.033
to spread the funder influence so that we restore the idea

0:11:41.033,0:11:44.225
of dependence upon the people alone.

0:11:44.225,0:11:47.655
And to do this does not require a constitutional amendment,

0:11:47.655,0:11:48.914
changing the First Amendment.

0:11:48.914,0:11:52.273
To do this would require a single statute,

0:11:52.273,0:11:54.465
a statute establishing what we think of

0:11:54.465,0:11:57.161
as small dollar funded elections,

0:11:57.161,0:11:59.369
a statute of citizen-funded campaigns,

0:11:59.369,0:12:01.465
and there's any number of these proposals out there:

0:12:01.465,0:12:02.911
Fair Elections Now Act,

0:12:02.911,0:12:05.337
the American Anti-Corruption Act,

0:12:05.337,0:12:08.427
an idea in my book that I call the Grant and Franklin Project

0:12:08.427,0:12:10.761
to give vouchers to people to fund elections,

0:12:10.761,0:12:13.956
an idea of John Sarbanes called the Grassroots Democracy Act.

0:12:13.956,0:12:18.060
Each of these would fix this corruption

0:12:18.060,0:12:22.409
by spreading out the influence of funders to all of us.

0:12:22.409,0:12:25.067
The analytics are easy here.

0:12:25.067,0:12:30.580
It's the politics that's hard, indeed impossibly hard,

0:12:30.580,0:12:36.939
because this reform would shrink K Street,

0:12:36.939,0:12:41.799
and Capitol Hill, as Congressman Jim Cooper,

0:12:41.799,0:12:44.779
a Democrat from Tennessee, put it,

0:12:44.779,0:12:49.599
has become a farm league for K Street, a farm league for K Street.

0:12:49.599,0:12:51.564
Members and staffers and bureaucrats have

0:12:51.564,0:12:53.775
an increasingly common business model in their head,

0:12:53.775,0:12:56.843
a business model focused on their life after government,

0:12:56.843,0:12:59.164
their life as lobbyists.

0:12:59.164,0:13:02.710
Fifty percent of the Senate between 1998 and 2004

0:13:02.710,0:13:05.368
left to become lobbyists, 42 percent of the House.

0:13:05.368,0:13:06.844
Those numbers have only gone up,

0:13:06.844,0:13:09.190
and as United Republic calculated last April,

0:13:09.190,0:13:12.403
the average increase in salary for those who they tracked

0:13:12.403,0:13:17.765
was 1,452 percent.

0:13:17.765,0:13:24.131
So it's fair to ask, how is it possible for them to change this?

0:13:24.131,0:13:28.195
Now I get this skepticism.

0:13:28.195,0:13:33.131
I get this cynicism. I get this sense of impossibility.

0:13:33.131,0:13:35.459
But I don't buy it.

0:13:35.459,0:13:39.307
This is a solvable issue.

0:13:39.307,0:13:42.467
If you think about the issues our parents tried to solve

0:13:42.467,0:13:44.306
in the 20th century,

0:13:44.306,0:13:47.587
issues like racism, or sexism,

0:13:47.587,0:13:50.700
or the issue that we've been fighting in this century, homophobia,

0:13:50.700,0:13:53.187
those are hard issues.

0:13:53.187,0:13:56.107
You don't wake up one day no longer a racist.

0:13:56.107,0:14:00.418
It takes generations to tear that intuition, that DNA,

0:14:00.418,0:14:02.863
out of the soul of a people.

0:14:02.863,0:14:06.108
But this is a problem of just incentives, just incentives.

0:14:06.108,0:14:08.651
Change the incentives, and the behavior changes,

0:14:08.651,0:14:11.338
and the states that have adopted small dollar funded systems

0:14:11.338,0:14:14.468
have seen overnight a change in the practice.

0:14:14.468,0:14:16.449
When Connecticut adopted this system,

0:14:16.449,0:14:20.639
in the very first year, 78 percent of elected representatives

0:14:20.639,0:14:24.886
gave up large contributions and took small contributions only.

0:14:24.886,0:14:26.865
It's solvable,

0:14:26.865,0:14:29.675
not by being a Democrat,

0:14:29.675,0:14:31.470
not by being a Republican.

0:14:31.470,0:14:35.122
It's solvable by being citizens, by being citizens,

0:14:35.122,0:14:38.105
by being TEDizens.

0:14:38.105,0:14:42.442
Because if you want to kickstart reform,

0:14:42.442,0:14:45.893
look, I could kickstart reform

0:14:45.893,0:14:49.481
at half the price of fixing energy policy,

0:14:49.481,0:14:52.263
I could give you back a republic.

0:14:52.263,0:14:55.907
Okay. But even if you're not yet with me,

0:14:55.907,0:14:59.492
even if you believe this is impossible,

0:14:59.492,0:15:02.929
what the five years since I spoke at TED has taught me

0:15:02.929,0:15:05.527
as I've spoken about this issue again and again is,

0:15:05.527,0:15:09.353
even if you think it's impossible, that is irrelevant.

0:15:09.353,0:15:11.341
Irrelevant.

0:15:11.341,0:15:14.909
I spoke at Dartmouth once, and a woman stood up after I spoke,

0:15:14.909,0:15:16.752
I write in my book, and she said to me,

0:15:16.752,0:15:22.445
"Professor, you've convinced me this is hopeless. Hopeless.

0:15:22.445,0:15:25.295
There's nothing we can do."

0:15:25.295,0:15:27.220
When she said that, I scrambled.

0:15:27.220,0:15:29.362
I tried to think, "How do I respond to that hopelessness?

0:15:29.362,0:15:31.025
What is that sense of hopelessness?"

0:15:31.025,0:15:35.887
And what hit me was an image of my six-year-old son.

0:15:35.887,0:15:39.072
And I imagined a doctor coming to me and saying,

0:15:39.072,0:15:46.381
"Your son has terminal brain cancer, and there's nothing you can do.

0:15:46.381,0:15:48.635
Nothing you can do."

0:15:48.635,0:15:51.730
So would I do nothing?

0:15:51.730,0:15:54.102
Would I just sit there? Accept it? Okay, nothing I can do?

0:15:54.102,0:15:57.925
I'm going off to build Google Glass.

0:15:57.925,0:16:01.571
Of course not. I would do everything I could,

0:16:01.571,0:16:05.151
and I would do everything I could because this is what love means,

0:16:05.151,0:16:07.467
that the odds are irrelevant and that you do

0:16:07.467,0:16:11.046
whatever the hell you can, the odds be damned.

0:16:11.046,0:16:14.887
And then I saw the obvious link, because even we liberals

0:16:14.887,0:16:17.146
love this country.

0:16:17.146,0:16:20.119
(Laughter)

0:16:20.119,0:16:22.379
And so when the pundits and the politicians

0:16:22.379,0:16:24.689
say that change is impossible,

0:16:24.689,0:16:27.751
what this love of country says back is,

0:16:27.751,0:16:30.487
"That's just irrelevant."

0:16:30.487,0:16:32.527
We lose something dear,

0:16:32.527,0:16:35.734
something everyone in this room loves and cherishes,

0:16:35.734,0:16:39.682
if we lose this republic, and so we act

0:16:39.682,0:16:44.976
with everything we can to prove these pundits wrong.

0:16:44.976,0:16:47.412
So here's my question:

0:16:47.412,0:16:52.023
Do you have that love?

0:16:52.023,0:16:54.848
Do you have that love?

0:16:54.848,0:16:56.531
Because if you do,

0:16:56.531,0:17:01.920
then what the hell are you, what are the hell are we doing?

0:17:01.920,0:17:06.460
When Ben Franklin was carried from the constitutional convention

0:17:06.460,0:17:10.466
in September of 1787, he was stopped in the street by a woman who said,

0:17:10.466,0:17:13.924
"Mr. Franklin, what have you wrought?"

0:17:13.924,0:17:21.685
Franklin said, "A republic, madam, if you can keep it."

0:17:21.685,0:17:26.584
A republic. A representative democracy.

0:17:26.584,0:17:33.793
A government dependent upon the people alone.

0:17:33.793,0:17:38.378
We have lost that republic.

0:17:38.378,0:17:42.726
All of us have to act to get it back.

0:17:42.726,0:17:44.370
Thank you very much.

0:17:44.370,0:17:50.423
(Applause)

0:17:50.423,0:18:01.099
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. (Applause)