The Downside of Anti-lobbyist Rhetoric by Obama and Edwards

The Politico has picked up on the "potential downside of being anti-lobbyist" meme, which I posted on 10 days ago. You can read my original post here. Their story even validates my point about how banning lobbyists from a Presidential Administration radically reduces the talent pool, and quotes no less an authority than Paul Light, formerly with the Brookings Institution. However, it does not go into the potential damage such an action would do to the Capitol Hill Democratic Leadership, which would have been nice follow through. Just goes to show how lazy reporters really are.

Imitation really is a nice form of flattery. The Politico story is below:


Anti-lobby pledges easier said than done
By: Jeanne Cummings
January 14, 2008 09:07 PM EST

John Edwards and Barack Obama are taking their bans on donations from Washington lobbyists one step further: pledging to limit the role of the persuasion class in their administrations.

Needless to say, this isn’t sitting too well with lobbyists here in town, and at least one expert wonders whether it makes much sense.

“It’s easier to say you are going to ban lobbyists from your administration than actually doing it,” said Paul C. Light, an expert on federal appointments and hiring.

“We know from past research, back to the Kennedy administration, that almost two-thirds of presidential appointees come from within the Washington standard metropolitan area — almost a three- or four-mile radius around the White House,” he added.

The pledges from both candidates are aimed at bolstering their argument that they can change the way Washington operates. Neither is proposing an all-out ban on lobbyists-turned-presidential-advisers, although that might actually be easier to implement than what they are planning.

If elected, Edwards says he wouldn’t hire or appoint Washington-registered corporate lobbyists or those who represent foreign governments.

“It is unrealistic to think that you can sit at a table with drug companies, insurance companies and oil companies and they are going to negotiate their power away,” he says on the campaign trail.

Obama is keeping the door open to hiring them. But any lobbyist who joins his administration wouldn’t be permitted to work on “any project, law or regulation related to their former employer.” And, upon leaving his service, the former appointee would be prohibited from lobbying the Obama administration for the duration of his term.

On the campaign trail, the Illinois senator vows to “challenge the money and influence that’s stood” in the way of major policy changes. He also reminds audiences that he co-sponsored sweeping ethics reform legislation passed last year. “I’ve gotten something done,” he says.

Certainly, there are reasons for any administration — and particularly a new one — to be cautious. The most obvious one: Jack Abramoff.

Abramoff, who was convicted in a bribery scheme involving members of Congress, never officially worked for the White House. But in 2001, he used his ties to the new Bush administration to promote the hiring of some of his allies in the Interior Department and the General Services Administration. Then he used those connections to advance the interests of his clients. (Some of his Bush administration allies ultimately were convicted, too.)

The Abramoff scandal was the subject of hearings chaired by Republican presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain of Arizona. The fallout tarnished Congress more than the White House. But it fed the story line of Bush critics who claim the administration has been too cozy with corporate interests and lobbyists.

While it makes sense for the Abramoff scandal to prompt a prospective president to raise his guard, cases such as his are pretty rare. Meanwhile, there are some downsides to the Obama and Edwards pledges.

Lobbyists, for all their baggage, also happen to represent some of the best-trained advocates in Washington. The community also is home to a slew of experts on policy ranging from health care to energy to foreign affairs.


The Edwards and Obama approaches could wind up excluding, or discouraging, an impressive pool of talent from assisting their White Houses.

“I just think it’s silly,” said Charlie Black, a longtime lobbyist who is now helping McCain’s campaign.
“There are a lot of CEOs who have to register as lobbyists and their executives who come to town to meet with members. It’s demonizing a group of people who are mostly honorable people and who are knowledgeable about how government works and public policy,” he added.

Indeed, the pool of registered lobbyists is expanding today under the ethics reform law pushed by Obama.

Ethics attorneys in Washington spent much of last year urging corporations to err on the side of caution by registering anyone who touches, or even confers about, a strategy for influencing Congress. That could shrink the potential employment pool under Edwards’ no-corporate-lobbyist rules.

The fine wording of Edwards’ hiring ban is also likely to lead to some predictably edgy headlines, warned Light, a professor of public service at New York University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Among the scrutiny the former North Carolina senator would face: questions about the fairness of hiring a former labor union lobbyist while shutting out any corporate advocates, or headlines that note an appointee had once been a registered lobbyist.

“It’s a nice promise to make, but the people who have to implement the rules could go crazy,” Light said.

The decision by both candidates to ban federal lobbyists — not state lobbyists — from their donor lists already has led to the same sort of technical attacks.

At a New Hampshire debate, Hillary Rodham Clinton noted that a high-ranking figure in Obama’s campaign is a lobbyist for a pharmaceutical company. Obama shook his head and muttered that the charge just wasn’t so. But the adviser is indeed a lobbyist, albeit at the state level.

Finally, the policies overlook some new realities: Many in Washington want to be, or wind up becoming, a lobbyist. Republicans have long used lobbying shops as a refuge while their party was out of power. In the Bush years, Democrats had begun to follow the same path. Democratic lobbyists’ ranks swelled significantly last year after their party took over the Congress, making them sought-after hires for groups that had lost touch with the once-minority party.

That phenomenon would not only limit Edwards’ personnel choices, but it could make Obama’s post-service rules unpalatable to many who would lose significant income if they lost their ability to lobby the administration.

“It’s hard to be in this town without doing some lobbying to get by,” Light concluded.

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