Special interests

...If any interests are "special," in a politically and morally significant sense, it is the economic elites that come to Washington to line their own pockets...

...The Democrats' bill, S.3, the Senate Election Ethics Act, is a stronger version of the MitchellBoren bill that passed 59-40 in the Senate last year...

...So much for think tanks as a "special interest" target of the right...

...There's the Tobacco Institute, promoting the fantasy that smoking doesn't kill people, and the even more bizarre National Rifle Association, advocating the freedom to use handguns, machine guns, and assault weapons...

...On almost any given issue in our political culture, there are organized interest groups in opposing (or at least competing) camps...

...Commercial television has raised the monetary stakes, while also hastening the decline of political discourse into a free-for-all of shallow slogans, crude imagery, slash attacks, and ideological food fights...

...In recent usage the term "special interest" has often been used to imply that liberalism and the left care only for fragmented publics (blacks, Hispanics, women, and so on) and not for the nation as a whole...

...yet many legislators resent being indentured to the present system, with its humiliating and time-consuming political fund-raising...

...At present, Congress hasn't the stomach or the spine for so radical a measure as total public financing...

...Such groups are no less special or interested than their progressive counterparts...

...Labor PACs are indeed major funders...

...A second dimension, on a scale almost too vast to comprehend, is the predominance of television in American politics over the past generation...

...Of course there are special interests—I will list some varieties shortly...

...These organizations fall into several categories...

...And there are always some—polluters, drug dealers, and so on—who would stand to gain by compromising those broad national interests...

...Junkets and honorariums constitute further forms of special-interest corruption, and franking privileges amount to huge public subsidies for incumbents...

...The remaining fourteen think tanks are decidedly conservative...

...In fact, these latter associations—which include dozens of business and industrial groups with close ties to the Republican party—differ only in that they promote the financial and regulatory interests of their own constituent members...

...unresolved legacies of, and backlashes against, Watergate and Vietnam...

...Even the widely shared values just mentioned are compromised for political reasons and because of limited resources...

...of course they should be removed from the public trough...

...The most powerful and effective special interests in our society are not the defenders of the weak but the representatives of the strong: not the advocates of a fairer, safer, or greener America but corporate and industrial political action committees (PACs) foundations, trade groups, and the like...

...Various interlocking trends have produced this victory for right-wing rhetoric...

...But in the end, there's a blunt truth about our SUMMER • 1991 • 417 sturdy but flawed democracy: when a majority of Americans recognize the travesty and demand change, either in how we elect our officials or how we conduct our debate, they'll get it...

...Chamber of Commerce, and the huge oil, insurance, banking, trucking, airline, and pharmaceutical lobbies: not exactly agitators for the downtrodden...

...Like other buzzwords—choice, family, opportunity, and (most recently) "politically correct" —the phrase "special interest" can be used seriously as a neutral and descriptive term or, as is usually the case, as a rhetorical device, to defeat, bypass, or enflame rather than to argue or explain...

...Competition among interest groups is intrinsic to, and develops apace with the complexity of, a democratic society...

...But in a stratified democracy, the privilege of appealing to the public or national interest is widely abused...

...During the 1988 election cycle alone, nearly $3 billion was pumped into the political process...

...If cash were wholly removed from the political process through public financing of all federal elections, we would have less to fear from rhetoric of the "special interest" kind—and from special interests themselves...

...What we can say is that nonprofit and issue-oriented groups represent popular interests and public purposes rather than the private economic interests of a particular group or industry...

...And it's all done in behalf of special 416 • DISSENT Notebook interests—mostly private and corporate interests— even as nonprofit agencies and citizen lobbies are smeared as "special interests" with a broad polemical brush...

...Some democracy...

...Their combined budgets for 1988 were some $32 million—but fully half of that represents a single think tank—the Brookings Institution—which is well within the mainstream...

...Meanwhile, fewer than half of all eligible voters now go to the polls...

...Although the current political climate tolerates rhetoric suggesting the exact opposite, private economic interests have in fact long enjoyed superior influence on American government...

...and the turnover rate among incumbents is glacial: in 1988, 402 members of Congress were reelected, while seven were turned out of office...

...Speaking of cerebral, what about think tanks...

...We find here, for example, the National Association of Realtors and the American Medical Association (two of the biggest PACs in Washington), the National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S...

...In California, where there will be three Senate races in the next three years, it will cost candidates more on the order of $8 to $10 million to get through the primary and general elections...

...In fact, both major parties represent "special interests" if they stand for anything at all...

...In a democracy it is both inevitable and desirable that groups and associations further particular policies or interests...

...in other words, a senator has to raise on the order of $15,000 per week over the course of an entire term (or, better yet, raise even more in order to scare off serious opposition...

...Correlates of this trend include the rise of direct-mail fund-raising (pioneered by George McGovern but perfected by Richard Viguerie and other conservatives...

...As information passes through the political bazaar, it is routinely corrupted by lobbyists, spin doctors, image managers, flacks, consultants, and other purveyors of the fragmentary, the simplistic, and the pretend...

...As I will suggest, the idea of a broad national or public interest is problematic...

...and a $300 billion deficit, engineered in part to secure the reign of political reaction...

...Of course, purely informational competition would be no guarantee of enlightened government: democracy itself may sometimes be a check on excellence...

...According to Common Cause, which represents the "special interest" of good government, fifteen out of thirty-two senators seeking re-election last year either had no opposition at all or outspent their opponents by at least nine to one...

...Imminent threats to public health and national security, and kindred matters on which there is overwhelming consensus, make the concept of national or public interest useful...

...If "special interests" are essential to political participation, then using the term invidiously is disingenuous at best...

...In addition, there are groups representing such menacing and partisan causes as peace, arms control, public health, nutrition, world hunger, population control, and clean air and water...

...Private groups would still be able to buy more and better soapboxes...

...That's just in the "interest groups" category...

...But they are less willing to put meaningful limits on campaign spending that would preclude candidates from financing themselves or raising money from wealthy individuals...

...Several conclusions are inescapable...

...Another entire section— "trade and professional" — runs to twelve pages, and lists all kinds of organizations, none of which maintain offices in Washington merely to keep up appearances...

...and 1,816 corporate PACs...

...It calls for a ban on PACs, spending limits, mandatory accountability for ads, and provides incentives for longer television spots through vouchers for ads of a minute or longer...

...It has made politics not only more expensive but more entertaining, spectacular, and superficial...

...According to Congressional Quarterly's WashingSUMMER • 1991 • 415 Notebook ton Information Directory, the advertising business is represented by six different organizations...

...Of the twenty-six Washington-based research institutions and opinion mills listed there, about six could be considered genuinely bipartisan...

...the cost of television time has increased more than tenfold since 1974...

...The situation is appalling, and the symptoms multiple...

...If one consults, for example, The Capital Source a leading directory of Beltway organizations, one finds several hundred entries under the heading "interest groups...

...The distinction between public and private interests would survive, but the inequality of power between them would no longer be a key political multiplier...

...Last year, PAC contributions to House incumbents exceeded those to challengers by a ratio of sixteen to one...

...The regulation of [conflicting] interests," wrote Madison in The Federalist Papers, "forms the principal task of modern legislation and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of government...

...a couple of these (the Democracy Project, the Institute for Policy Studies) are obviously progressive...

...Only two Senate challengers outspent incumbents...

...But organized labor is outnumbered and outspent in Washington by business interests— whose adversarial relation to workers and hostility to collective bargaining occasion the existence and tortured history of the labor movement...

...The danger is that it will be diluted and cosmetic...

...One finds, for example, the Anti-Defamation League, the Consumers Union, the Children's Defense Fund, Planned Parenthood, and agencies with missions such as cancer research, automobile safety, and the special interests of veterans and retarded people...

...in the Senate it was eight to one...

...Amid a rising level of disgust among legislators themselves, accentuated by the Keating Five scandal, reform legislation is at last gathering momentum...

...To test the thesis that leftist special interests are overrepresented in that category, one can consult CQ's "Public Interest Profiles...

...and the ludicrous 1976 Supreme Court decision in Buckley v. Valeo, which equated independent political expenditure with freedom of speech, thus extending to corporate and wealthy political donors the imprimatur of the First Amendment...

...Unions, it is true, represent the interests of their members, and some of them have traditional ties to the left...

...The mostly member-based nonprofit organizations may not always represent "the public interest" — depending on how that notoriously vague concept is defined...

...But when we come to the popular and debased use of "special interests" we enter an arena of calculated deception...

...Another half dozen or so are moderate-to-liberal...

...It also would close loopholes in the existing laws, such as bundling of contributions, soft money paid to state parties, and independent expenditures on behalf of candidates...

...Until then, don't hold your breath...

...Their combined 1988 budgets equal nearly $75 million...

...their combined budgets for 1988 were roughly $10 million...

...Of course special-interest groups have a right to exist...

...Some Republicans, including the president, have expressed willingness to ban PACs, which they regard as keeping incumbent Democrats in office...

...Mobil Oil would continue to promote gas on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times...

...However, our peek at The Capital Source suggests a much deeper hypocrisy...

...But the third and most basic dimension—the factor corrupting discourse and electoral politics alike and the real source of the special-interest problem—is the escalating role of money in the political system...

...But elections would be fairer, and legislators wouldn't spend much of their time raising funds from such groups in exchange for what is delicately called "access...

...The only alternative is totalitarian dictatorship...

...According to the Federal Election Commission, there were 354 labor PACs in 1988...

...Senate races now cost an average of $3 to $4 million...

...786 representing trade and membership groups...

...To use the term "special interest" pejoratively in connection with citizen lobbies, unions, and issue groups, but not with Raytheon, Citibank, or the AMA, is a perversity worthy of Orwell...

...Yet, listed among the ten biggest PACs in Washington in 1987-88 are the National Security PAC, the realtors' PAC, the trial lawyers' PAC, the NRA Political Victory Fund, the AMA PAC, Campaign America, and Jesse Helms's National Congressional Club—and not a single group representing the political interests of working people...

...First, the "special interest" label isn't the exclusive property of any party or ideology...

...1,115 PACs without sponsoring organizations...

...the post-Watergate reforms that opened the PAC floodgates...

...The list also includes dozens of distinctly conservative organizations: Americans for Constitutional Action, the Eagle Forum, the Liberty Lobby, the American Legion, the American Conservative Union, the Free Congress Foundation, the National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC), the anti-union National Right to Work Committee, the Daughters of the American Revolution...

...Some are distinctly liberal: the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans for Democratic Action, the Alliance for Justice, People for the American Way, the Urban League, and so forth...

...But some interests are more "special" than others...

...The alcohol industry has five: the National Licensed Beverage Association, the National Liquor Stores Association, the Distilled Spirits Council, the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of America, and a more cerebral-sounding outfit, the Beer Institute...

...It is the independent nonprofit groups, with purely political or public-service agendas, that the right targets in its special-interest rhetoric, while ignoring private, profit-seeking interests...

...No doubt there is a national interest in clean drinking water, healthy children, and safe streets...

...Indeed, one of the lessons of Orwell is that freedom is threatened not by some imminent dystopia but by a subtle yet profound process of erosion, and its signature isn't physical coercion but gross corruptions of language...

...The political background includes the conservative ascendancy in national politics since 1968...

...The assertion that progressive interest groups are "special" in some insidious way or have a choke hold on our political system is easy enough to refute...