Lessig

Not that I believe it should be difficult to convince people of the importance or virtue in a trial lawyer's life. It just is. Everyone believes our legal system is broken -- which it is, but not for the reasons people believe. People think there are millionaires who made their money by spilling McDonald's coffee on their laps; they imagine punitive damages routinely inflate jury awards, such that a lawsuit becomes a better bet than the lottery. Yet a Bureau of Justice Statistics study from 1996 found that only 3.3% of civil verdicts included punitive damages; that the median award was $40,000 ($75,000 when awarded by a judge, and only $27,000 when awarded by a jury). The fact is that our legal system gives victims a tiny fraction of the actual harm caused to them by the negligence of others. And the trend is only getting worse.

But you don't win elections by teaching people that what they believe is just not true. You win elections by connecting with what people think they already know. So how could this book play its role -- a book to help a candidate get elected president -- when its plot seems all wrong?

This is not a book not about the tort system. It isn't about "systems" at all. There's no effort to justify a practice that he (and I) assume is good. There's no barrage of statistics to prove that what (most of) you believe is false. There is instead just four stories about lives helped by this country lawyer within a system that seems keen not to help. These are four wins for the right side, in a game that unfortunately doesn't seem biased to the right.

The book is an easy and moving read. Edwards describes life raising his kids, each week explaining to them at the dinner table the cases he's working on then. The stories feel like the stories told at a dinner table. There's a rare and clumsy moment, when it feels as if the dinner table has become a political speech, but most of the time, and very powerfully, the stories show, rather than explain, the justice that is still possible. However rarely, at least in these four cases.

This is a man who believes, but is no theorist. I read these stories and curse the system that produces such pain. He writes these stories to celebrate the good that can be pulled from a system he doesn't pause to question. I'm sure there are questions that rage in his head; but these are about life when there is no time to question. There is anger, and frustration. But there is doing good with what there is. An an idealism of practice, not of ideas.

We don't get a sense of how often the victories come, nor whether they are as personal or close. And with a measure of integrity and privacy that seems impossible in a candidate for president, the most poignant and painful story is also the least developed or explained. Indeed, it is not even one of the "four."

The book is haunted by the memory of Edwards' oldest son, Wade, whose car was swept from a highway in April, 1996. Every other story is filled with detail and reflection. Not this one. Every other story shows the flash of justice despite a system seemingly committed to the opposite. Not this one. As a father of just three months, I can't imagine surviving such a loss. I can't imagine how one continues after it. Yet the book passes quickly to the final of the four "trials," not because this seems any less important, but because it seems not ours. However young this candidate is, he is not of the Jerry Springer generation. He, and we, are better for that.

I should read some other candidate books, and I will. At least a few. And of course, though there is every reason in the world why there should be passion around this candidate, that passion has not taken off. A Senator who refuses PAC contributions, whose campaign has focused on careful and sensible policy, who has come from a mill worker's family to be a candidate for president: one might have predicted more from this campaign.

I've been a skeptic of the campaign, not the man. This book is a perfect example. Edwards is the rare politician who continues to surprise, the more you learn, and surprise in the best possible way. But to learn more, you need to see more than the 30 seconds of politics that is the rhythm of campaigns today. This book could be that for some. Yet it languishes in the 3,000s on Amazon's list, and is being given away as a gift to those who contribute to the campaign.

But contributors are not the sort who need to read this book. Skeptics are. And if you're going to find a way into the hearts of the skeptics, you need to find a different path than all the traditional ways. Dean found that with the strength of a message ramified through the passion of the web. Edwards needs to find that for his story too.

Cory Doctorow found a way to get his book bought -- by making it easy for people to try it, by making it free for them to download. His aim was to sell more books, not to run for president, and he succeeded in selling more books. So you'd think those running for president might find his lesson interesting. Yet this careful campaign can't even try this tiny innovation. And hence the story and the character of this candidate remains obscure.

Politics is rightly governed by the inverse of the Smuckers principle ("With a name like Smuckers, it's just got to be good!"): The inverse principle goes something like this: "Anyone as smooth and good looking as he has just got to be fake." But the key with both is to get people to taste. And this campaign has got to find a way to get more to taste — at least if this candidate is going to reach this summit this time.