Alex Massie Alex Massie

If you build it, they will need to come (and lobby)

Barack Obama – like John Edwards before him – and, I dare say, the majority of Democrats hates (or pretends to hate lobbyists). To listen to Democrats talk you might be think that lobbyists are (with nasty trade with foreigners of course) the greatest threat to the future well-being of the United States.

And indeed there is something discreditable about the lobbying explosion in Washington in recent years. Still, however regrettable elements of the lobbying industry may be it seems pretty clear to me that removing or curtailing the right to petition your government would be a pretty severe infringement upon a pretty fundamental liberty.

Furthermore, to the extent lobbying does in fact corrupt the business of government it’s largely because, well, the business of government has become lobbying. Or rather, as this excellent article by Jeffrey Birnbaum in the Washington Post magazine makes clear, it’s now all-but impossible to run a major business without representation in Washington. Complaints about lobbying are really complaints about the government itself. It may, mind you, be some time before Mr Obama or other Democrats recognise this.

Birnbaum relates – in an often very funny article – how the travel and tourism industries tried to get the federal government to pay for a $200m advertising campaign designed to lure foreign tourists to the United States*. The point is not that the tourism industry is especially venal, rather that it is typical…

The explosion in the size of K Street, the locus of the lobbying industry, is an extension of the growth and reach of government. The ballooning federal budget has its tentacles in every aspect of American life and commerce.

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