The Lobbyists

"Well, as Machiavelli said, flattery is everything, it’s one’s weakness. I selected this book because I’m one of the characters in it. About the book I would say, it’s a good sitcom, it is a nice read, it gives some of the flavor of what lobbying is about. It doesn’t get into fundamental ethical questions – – whether the elites have a stranglehold on public policy or whether the system is more open and, as Alinsky suggested, the less powerful can prevail. It’s not an analytical book per se. But it gives you a good flavour of what it’s all about. Lots of good stories. There’s one bit I like about Robert Juliano, who represents the labor unions. He gets yet another request to go to a fundraiser and he refuses to go saying: ‘I’m getting tired of using the union’s money…for f***ing functions which do absolutely nothing for anybody. It’s gotten to the point where there are no benefits.’ It talks about the constant pursuit, the constant need to cultivate one’s current relationships and build new ones. My wife told my mother-in-law, when she asked what I did, that I sell wind. It’s so ephemeral. The book is like a sitcom but it also does probably describe as well as anything I’ve seen the culture of this whatever-you-want-to-call-it, the lobbying world. Yes, it’s one book I’ve been in. This book covers 1989-90 which is an interesting period [there were a number of lobbying-related scandals in Congress, leading, amongst other things, to the resignation of the Democratic speaker of the house, Jim Wright]. But also, you can compare what’s changed and what hasn’t changed 20 years on. Yes. Because I come off one-third absent-minded professor, one-third technician and I forget what the other third was. But in some ways I cultivate that image because it makes me stand out. The story about losing my trousers on Pennsylvania Avenue wasn’t exactly true…But other things, quite frankly, yes. I was surprised, I’d forgotten all this. I was surprised how tactical I was, looking at each development and moving on it. No. And something needs to be made very clear: when one talks about a lobbyist, it encompasses a lot of activities. It obviously encompasses people who promote special deals or special breaks or special items for a specific company, or a specific industry. Lobbying can be done ethically – your activities could be ethical or not ethical, they can be legal or illegal. I feel comfortable with the fact that I am promoting one view of public policy [lowering capital gains tax and taxes on businesses] – as opposed to a ‘special interest’ per se. Yes, and that is one of the more serious aspects of it. The Kaiser book So Damn Much Money goes into this more. As Jesse Unruh said ‘money is the mother’s milk of politics’ and there’s no question that money plays a pervasive role. Having said that, sometimes different interests balance each other out. Money is spent on both sides – and yes there is an inordinate amount of time spent by members of Congress raising money and spending money, but if you talk about the amount of money that is spent – more money is spent advertising toothpaste. The extent to which money determines elections is not clear-cut. Even now you see people being completely outspent and yet winning. The other alternative is to have public finances [for campaigns], and that also raises some concerns. My approach is not to have the public pay for elections, just full disclosure on the understanding that there is hypocrisy on both sides. The problem is that, unfortunately, I am a Burkean. I am concerned about solutions to problems with a lot of unintended consequences. I can think of numerous ones. One is the milking of clients. The Abramoff case is the perfect example. I think it’s also in the Birnbaum story – people tell various interests or clients that they’re doing stuff when they’re doing nothing. But that’s not the most egregious. The most egregious is just plain out corruption: basically, giving money to a politician to enact or change a rule or a law. That does happen. I think it happens less than it did many years ago. But it does happen. My third example is hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is when the Republicans are in office, Democratic interest groups talk about all sorts of conflicts of interest, and today when Democrats are in power, we see the same thing. Another form is ‘public interest’ lawyers who join the government to do good, write regulations to allegedly accomplish good things, but they are the only ones who can understand these regulations. They then jump ship, become senior partners in big law firms because businesses subject to these new laws have to hire the only ones who can explain them. Also, we see influential Democrats in the public arena, who are perceived to be close to the Obama White House. They denounce lobbyists but at the same time have relatives who are lobbyists who play off the public position of their family. The other thing is the thing Jonathan Rauch describes – Demosclerosis – how nothing can be done in Congress, that no changes can be made, which is the charge that Kaiser makes in his book. But I’m not sure it’s the result of lobbyists or other forces. The legislative process is logrolling. Some of these things that Birnbaum or others claim are so horrible, aren’t really corrupt. Politicians represent their constituencies, and who am I to say that a bridge to nowhere is an evil thing? I don’t doubt it. That’s the milking of your client – naïve people do this. I’m not sure that phone call did that much, because the Senator or Congressman on the other side knew what was going on. And so the person who suffered was the person who was dumb enough to hire the former Senator. The client may have got access, but that doesn’t mean that something corrupt happened. And yes, well-to-do people have more access than poor people. But Alinsky can win and does win. Yes, that’s what I found intriguing. They are great community organizers like Alinsky, like Barack Obama in his youth. As Jonathan Rauch put it, ‘The organization has no offices, dwelling instead in activists’ homes and laptops…They intend to rewrite the rule book for political organizing, turning decades of established practice upside down. If they succeed, or even half succeed, the tea party’s most important legacy may be organizational, not political.’ Yes, the fact they challenge, they express their views, they’re out on the streets. Obviously I object to racist placards and I object to stomping on people’s heads, but I applaud them going to their representatives and saying ‘No! I’m not going to be fooled by what you’re saying. You say one thing, you vote another – you don’t represent me.’ That, I applaud. Obviously I’m probably in a minority in the business community saying that I welcome the Tea Party. But I find it refreshing. The Tea Party is against lobbyists, but then it depends what kind of a lobbyist you are. I’m like Mitch Daniels , I’m a Libertarian, and many of the things they advocate I’m also against. I want government out of my hair. In my area, taxes, what are they basically saying? They are saying, ‘I don’t want people to take my money and give it to people and government programs that I don’t like.’ Secondly they’re saying, ‘I don’t want my hard work and my savings and my retirement nest egg taxed; I don’t want Abramoff and special breaks for Indian tribes.’ It turns out that our professional challenges are similar in some ways. And I think now, by working with them, there is the possibility of a fundamental upturning of the tax system. One of my first endeavours will be to get to know some of the Tea Party people. I suspect I’ll be able to. I won’t wear a bow tie, I won’t wear a pin-striped suit, or smoke a cigar. But I’ll meet with them and I’ll say – we share many goals. Actually one of the most stimulating discussions I recently had was a dinner with a Congressman-Elect who owes his place in Congress to the Tea Party movement. Yes, but then, in many ways, they are a lobby too."