The Trouble With Lobbyist-Bashing
To return to yesterday’s discussion the reason the Obama administration is finding itself needing to wriggle out of some of its anti-lobbyist rhetoric is that their rhetoric never made sense. “K Street” is a synedoche for the influence peddling business, but it’s also an actual street and one you get east of 9th Street it takes on a much humbler character. Indeed, I live on a stretch of K Street primarily known for its vacant lots. At the same time, many pernicious interest groups have their offices on L Street or M Street or, indeed, somewhere in Virginia. You wouldn’t want to actually crack down on K Street, leaving out all the bad people on other streets but hitting the new Busboys & Poets coffee shop.
Similarly, when people hear about “lobbyists” what they’re thinking of is corporate malefactors. But a registered lobbyist is an occupational category with a precise meaning—it’s a license to deal with congressional staff in a certain way—that matches up pretty imperfectly with the rhetorical force of the term. Someone—or maybe more than one person—at the Center for American Progress is a lobbyist. When we lobby, it’s on behalf of our policy research. Just like when Raytheon lobbies it’s on behalf of their desire to make money by selling military equipment. Unions have lobbyists and environmental groups have lobbyists. And, of course, big business has lobbyists. But big business also employs plenty of people who don’t fit the legal definition of “lobbying” to advance their agenda. For example, here’s David Corn writing about the Center for Consumer Freedom:
No wonder some within industry are raising a fuss about Sunstein’s regulatory beliefs. They have turned to a mega-lobbyist named Richard Berman, whose firm, Berman & Company, runs a variety of front groups for big business. In one famous episode from the mid-’90s, Berman established a group called the Guest Choice Network to fight the creation of nonsmoking sections in restaurants. The group was quietly funded by Philip Morris.
The Berman-run Center for Consumer Freedom claims its mission is “promoting personal responsibility and protecting consumer choice,” but its real purpose is to push back against activist groups and public interest nonprofits. A section of its website called “If Bacon Is Wrong, We Don’t Want To Be Lite” defends bacon, ice cream, and hot dogs, saying, “There’s no real scientific consensus on diet and cancer.” An op-ed written by Berman and posted on CCF’s site dismisses a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association that links soft drinks to type 2 diabetes, calling it “the latest phony food scare.” CCF attributes the American obesity epidemic not to fast and junk food, but to “sitting disease.” CCF’s latest target is Sunstein, who it claims has a “secret aim to push a radical animal-rights agenda in the White House.” The assertion appears similar to the usual alarmism that Berman peddles to further industry interests, but Sunstein has indeed made provocative statements on the issue of animal rights.
Berman is a lobbyist. And one of the things Berman does is fund a non-profit front group to defend his clients from criticism coming from public health advocates. But the guys who work at his front group aren’t “lobbyists.” And yet, I’d much rather have a registered lobbyist for public health organizations serve in a public health regulation job than have a non-lobbyist with a CCF background. Similarly, better to have a lobbyist for environmental groups working at the EPA than to have a non-lobbyist from the emissions-loving, corporate funded Competitive Enterprise Institute.
UPDATE: The article I credited to David Corn was actually written by Jonathan Stein. I apologize for the error.
35 Responses to “The Trouble With Lobbyist-Bashing”
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January 28th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Okay, but surely you aren’t suggesting that cracking down on the hipster douchebags at Busboys & Poets would be a bad thing?
January 28th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
Who is quietly funding the Center for America Progress as a non-profit front group for particular interests?
January 28th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
Re ““K Street” is a synedoche for the influence peddling business, but it’s also an actual street and one you get east of 9th Street it takes on a much humbler character. Indeed, I live on a stretch of K Street primarily known for its vacant lots. At the same time, many pernicious interest groups have their offices on L Street or M Street or, indeed, somewhere in Virginia. You wouldn’t want to actually crack down on K Street, leaving out all the bad people on other streets but hitting the new Busboys & Poets coffee shop.”
—————-
You know, normally I would argue that there is no reason why smoking pot and Internet blogging have to be mutually exclusive activities but still.
January 28th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
Well the problem is that Obama, and Edwards, decided to cater to the Sirotas of the left to be an alternative to Clinton in 2007. Worked out well enough then, but he’s paying for it with headaches now.
I’d also point out that lobbyists are basically on level with defense attorneys. Yeah it may be a sleazy business sometime, but the right to petition the government and to associate freely are guaranteed by the Constitution just like the right to counsel is, and why progressives, who I doubt would even consider arguing that “bad people” weren’t entitled to their 6th amendment rights, want to curtail 1st amendment rights surrounding political activity I don’t really get.
January 28th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
Actually, this brings up something I’ve always wondered about. What do lobbyists – the bad ones – do? Which is to say, how do they get results? Is it a simple matter of making clear, with as much deniability as possible, that $x is available if a congressman votes a certain way? Is there something else they can do to advance their agenda?
January 28th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
“Indeed, I live on a stretch of K Street”
This makes you a 24/7 lobbyist.
January 28th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
“Who is quietly funding the Center for America Progress as a non-profit front group for particular interests?”
Folks who think oppositely of the folks who quietly fund the Cato Institute.
January 28th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
“Actually, this brings up something I’ve always wondered about. What do lobbyists – the bad ones – do? Which is to say, how do they get results? Is it a simple matter of making clear, with as much deniability as possible, that $x is available if a congressman votes a certain way? Is there something else they can do to advance their agenda?”
Money laundering, illegal gifts, discrete favors that are hard to find out about, even blackmail on rare occassions.
For the most part though, most lobbyists are on the up and up, even if the interests they represent aren’t on the pppularity level of cute puppies.
January 28th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
did you know that richard berman is the father of poet/songwriter David Berman from the Silver Jews? It’s true!
January 28th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
I’m surprised you didn’t address this news here:
January 28th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
““K Street” is a synedoche for the influence peddling business, but it’s also an actual street and one you get east of 9th Street it takes on a much humbler character.”
It’s spelled synecdoche, I think, but you could say something similarly pointless about the use of the phrase “Wall Street”. There’s a Starbucks at the other end of Wall Street from the NYSE, but when people talk about “Wall Street” most listeners assume they aren’t talking about the baristas at that Starbucks.
January 28th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
“For the most part though, most lobbyists are on the up and up, even if the interests they represent aren’t on the pppularity level of cute puppies.”
I bet that’s true, but how does an honest lobbyist get results? I mean, sometimes I guess just getting into the congressman’s office is a big leg up, and then you can make an actual argument on the merits. But somehow I doubt that’s how it works, even with the honest lobbyists.
January 28th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
Bacon needs no corporate lobbyist to speak for it. Bacon speaks for itself. It is God’s perfect food. Were there ever a piece of anti-bacon legislation, the Lord would break his millenia-long policy of not intervening in human affairs to smite every anti-bacon politician in the land.
Actually, it’s true that there’s little evidence that unhealthy foods give you cancer. They make you fat, but cancer, not so much.
The Silver Jews are a good band. That is all.
January 28th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
On occasion I have not spoken for myself. When I wrote the plays attributed to my buddy Bill, for example.
January 28th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
@12
Normally it’s not that hard. Remember, most things that get voted on aren’t huge votes that are getting tons of scrutiny, and sometimes you’re just talking about amendments or procedural votes. Obviously if a vote would be political suicide for someone, no one is going to get them to vote that way, but most of the time there’s no real political imperative to vote either way, and the member isn’t an expert on the question because it doesn’t relate to their committees. So, basically, lobbyists become their go to people for information. Now you could feed them a line of bullshit once, but if you do and they figure that out you’ve just lost all of your access to that member, much like a good defense attorney could conceivably create a laughably absurd defense for his client or knowingly lie through his teeth to the judge. It could work, in theory, but once the judge finds out what happens that attorney has no credibility in his court room whatsoever.
So basically a good lobbyist gets results by earning lawmakers trust, and maintaining that relationship.
January 28th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
As Lenin said, the eternal question is “Who? Whom?”
January 28th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
I once was a registered lobbyist. IMHO, what makes it work are two things. First, what Brien Jackson said–that’s 100% right. Second, bring money–lots and lots of money. Both parts are important, but if you can do both, you have a leg up, all things being equal. And the money is about campaign funding. So the big bucks leads to a tilted playing field.
January 28th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
@15: If true, that means that information really commands quite a premium. I suppose what congressmen are looking for isn’t the kind of thing they could just ask CRS…
Also, it sounds like a classic arms race. A smart congressman should play lobbyists off each other, so that at the end of the day he/she has lots of information from a variety of viewpoints. The Japanese government did this back in colonial days – they would demand information from European traders in exchange for access to their markets. The Europeans felt free to lie about events in Europe, but they knew they couldn’t lie about events closer to Japan because the Japanese would check their stories with the other Europeans. The Japanese did a decent job extracting the information they wanted.
January 28th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Yeah that’s basically right. The quickest way to get lots of access is to be frank and honest, even if that means you lose a particular fight.
In any event the lesson to be learned here is pretty simple; pandering to populist know-nothing hacks, left or right, just causes you headaches down te road.
January 28th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
Interesting but not relevant: this Berman is the father of the Silver Jew’s David Berman. Sometimes the apple falls far far away from the tree.
January 28th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
too many steves (#13)
Hey! You’re stealing my closing catch-phrase!
January 28th, 2009 at 6:05 pm
@Minderbender — I work with lobbyists in my company, and can tell you what it means from a corporate perspective. I would ammend the very accurate stuff that Brien Jackson said by noting that people who work in a particular industry are presumably experts on their industry. So, if Congress is writing legislation on, say, pharmaceuticals (not my industry), the lobbyists’ job is to let the Congressman’s office know what effect the proposed legislation would have on the pharma industry, the thousands of pharma workers in his district, the economy overall, etc; The congressional staffers work a million different issues, some of them highly complex and technical and specialized, and can’t be expected to know the details on all of them. The (pharma)lobbyist’s job would also be to remind the Congressional office of stuff they might forget, like the fact that yes, patented drugs are expensive, but the process of researching dozens of drugs and having one pan out is a very expensive process; if you cap drug prices you’ll jsut end up with fewer effective drugs, etc, etc.
The name of the game is information. OBVIOUSLY its information from the persepctive of that industry — and anyone on the receiving side needs to remember that and analyze it with that in mind. But in an ideal world there are opposing voices with information from a different perspective – the problem is that some perspectives generally aren’t well represented by lobbyists (poor people, for example).
Getting rid of lobbying entirely isn’t the answer — legislation would be even less informed than it is today.
Of course, all that is only about “honest” lobbying (though many of you may find any kind of corporate lobbying tainted). The Jack Abramoffs and all that stuff is just plain illegal.
January 28th, 2009 at 9:10 pm
two points:
1)Did anyone really know what the word synecdoche meant before they made that movie? I sure didn’t. And apparently my spell-check still doesn’t
2)@ too many Steve’s–There is a large portion of the earth’s population who think that god is very much opposed to bacon.
January 30th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Information, is it?
The size of the staffs of our Congress persons grows daily. The average number employed per Senator is 68. Reps have less, only 25, on average.
There is now this thing called the Internet which is filled with so much information that no one should have any problem learning way too much about everything.
Freedom of speech should not cost money. Is it still freedom of speech when someone is paid to speak? Lawyers are paid to speak for others because they are learned in the law. What are the bonafides of the lobbyists? Where did they get their special knowledge?
Actual citizens who aren’t paid to speak can’t get access to “their” representatives because there isn’t enough time in the day to see all the lobbyists scheduled before the lowly regular guy.
Any interest which is special is by its very nature not in the interest of the public good.
February 2nd, 2009 at 4:19 pm
Really more “metonymy” than “synecdoche.”
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