* Back in the 1850s, the gun magnate Samuel Colt attempted to secure a federal patent extension with the help of young women who’d been enlisted to entertain elected officials. “To reach the heart or get the vote, the surest way is down the throat” is how a congressional committee characterized the philosophy of Colt’s top lobbyist.
* Then, in the 1970s, everything changed.
Fearing that increased government authority and widespread antibusiness sentiment had imperiled the future of capitalism, industry leaders resolved to crush their political adversaries in the labor, consumer, and environmental movements once and for all. They incited a revolution in corporate political activism, inventing new strategies for deploying their clout — in areas such as campaign finance and think tank scholarship — and transforming Washington’s once sleepy corporate lobbying community into the most powerful influence – peddling machine in American history. “My job used to be booze, broads, and golf,” 13 remarked one lobbyist in 1979. “Now it’s organizing coalitions and keeping information flowing.”
* By 2012, for every $1 spent by consumer groups or environmental activists to influence federal policy, corporations and their allies were spending $86.
* “economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while mass – based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.”
The unusually strong position of corporations in Washington made tough – minded consumer reforms nearly impossible. The major laws that did pass — such as the 2010 Dodd – Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which sought to crack down on Wall Street abuses, and President Barack Obama’s national health care bill the same year — weren’t fundamental overhauls of hopelessly broken industries but rather legislative compromises drafted in collaboration with business lobbyists. And key portions of these measures were subsequently watered down by judges, rolled back by lawmakers, or weakened during the federal rule – making process. But the goal wasn’t just kneecapping reform. More significantly, corporate lobbyists used their clout to bend the trajectory of federal policy making in a decidedly and actively pro – business direction.
* the broad parameters of federal economic policy would come to reflect the priorities of the modern corporate boardroom: lower taxes, fewer regulations, freer trade, weaker unions, and less commitment to social spending.
* Washington’s pro – business policy consensus would lay the groundwork for a period of astonishing wealth creation. Yet it would also unleash a cascade of economic disruption and social discord for Americans in both political parties. Federal policy makers raced to reposition the US economy away from manufacturing and toward the financial and knowledge – based fields of their corporate benefactors. Millions of blue – collar workers — who didn’t fit into the new paradigm of high – skilled labor and globalized trade — were left behind, shackling entire regions of the country with high unemployment, low social mobility, and endemic despair. Subsequent failures to adequately address a range of pressing concerns, such as stagnant wages, unaffordable health care, astronomical prescription drug prices, predatory home loans, and digital monopolies, kindled popular discontent with the political system. 26 All the while, as Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson demonstrate in their 2010 book, Winner – Take – All Politics , Washington’s corporate – friendly agenda was widening the current gulf between the rich and the poor to levels not seen since the 1920s — a development that fueled political polarization, inflamed class and ethnic resentments, and broadened the appeal of the extremist elements of our society.
* The patriarch of the first Democratic lobbying dynasty, Tommy Boggs, was the cigar – chomping son of a powerful congressman who set aside his own political ambitions for a life of influence peddling. His prized pupil, Evan Morris, was a wide – eyed upstart determined to surpass the legend of his mentor. Meanwhile, a contemporary of Boggs’s, the avant – garde political fixer Tony Podesta, used his experience as a brass – knuckled liberal activist to advance the interests of Wall Street and Silicon Valley. For more than a half century in the nation’s capital, these men would help unify a previously fractured business advocacy community, ignite an explosion of political spending in Washington, develop close ties to the administrations of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and lead the Democratic Party away from its old friends in organized labor and toward a new set of allies in corporate America.
During this same era, four conservative political operatives — Charlie Black, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, and Lee Atwater — used their links to the Reagan revolution to erect Washington’s signature GOP house of lobbying. Each member of the partnership had his own distinct role: Atwater, the vicious character assassin; Stone, the Watergate – era dirty trickster; Manafort, the Machiavellian mastermind; Black, the elder statesman.
* Rather than trying to reach individual members of Congress through envelopes of cash delivered in smoke – filled rooms, modern influence peddlers developed sophisticated strategies for winning the votes of lawmakers by shaping the opinions of their constituents back home in their districts. These innovations transformed what had been a business of personal connections and inside – the – Beltway access into one that deployed advanced media tactics to target ordinary Americans living thousands of miles outside of Washington. As K Street moved away from traditional “inside game” strategies in favor of this more advanced “outside game” approach, old – fashioned shoe – leather lobbyists began teaming up with a full sweep of related professionals — PR gurus, social media experts, political pollsters, data analysts, grassroots organizers — to further the interests of big US corporations and their executives.
* [By 1979] American share of the world’s economy was shrinking — and fast — nose – diving from roughly 40 percent in 1950 to 22 percent by 1980 [and in 2023, it was 26%].
* Early in his tenure, [Jimmy Carter’s FTC chair Michael] Pertschuk grew concerned about the risks of obesity, tooth decay, and other long – term negative health effects that sugary foods posed to children. He directed his indignation at the corporate producers of cereals and candy bars who, he argued, targeted children with television commercials designed specifically to hook them on sugar. Their still – developing brains, he argued, weren’t capable of telling the difference between advice from an adult and a sales pitch from a multinational conglomerate. “Commercial exploitation of children,” Pertschuk told the audience at the Action for Children’s Television Conference, “is repugnant in a civilized society.” In the fall of 1977 his staff began working on a rule that would limit food producers’ ability to advertise directly to children on television, 41 and Pertschuk moved to expedite the proposal so that it could be implemented without the typical delays.
The proposal jeopardized hundreds of millions of dollars in sales for food manufacturers and advertising revenues for broadcasters. A decade earlier, a CEO facing a similar threat might have thrown up his hands and swallowed the loss. But with corporate profits declining and regulatory costs rising, executives chose to fight back. As one Washington lawyer put it at the time, Pertschuk’s effort to regulate children’s advertising “awoke a sleeping giant.”
* Lee Atwater: “You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘N[ — — ], n[ — — ], n[ — — ].’ By 1968, you can’t say ‘n[ — — ]’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things, and a by – product of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, ‘We want to cut taxes, we want to cut this,’ is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than ‘‘N[ — — ], n[ — — ].’ So, any way you look at it, race is coming on the back burner.”
