It would have been so easy for Lessig to coast on the reputation of his extraordinary work with Creative Commons [0] and his professorship at Harvard. Instead, he (IMHO correctly) identified one of the greatest challenges of our time, political corruption. His first proposed solution, the MAYDAY PACn [1] (A SuperPAC to end SuperPACs), was a brilliant idea and an abject failure. So was his second, which was this presidential campaign. It is incorrect to say that he never had a chance, since you can see how close he was in polling [2] to qualifying for the debate, and getting into the debate would have had a huge impact on awareness of his ideas and potential solutions.
I do complain that he had fallen for the Green Lantern Theory of the Presidency [3], instead of understanding the complexity required for real change. But, I give him huge props for trying both of these approaches, and I can't wait to see what his third attempt to take on political corruption will be.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_license [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayday_PAC [2] http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/2016-national-d... [3] http://www.vox.com/2014/5/20/5732208/the-green-lantern-theor...