The Money Culture
excerpted from the book
The Corruption of American Politics
by Elizabeth Drew
The Overlook Press, 1999
Indisputably, the greatest change in Washington over the last
twenty-five years-in its culture, in the way it does business,
and the ever-burgeoning amount of business transactions that go
on here-has been in the preoccupation with money.
Striving for and obtaining money has become the predominant
activity-and not just in electoral politics-and its effects are
pernicious. The culture of money dominates Washington as never
before; money now rivals or even exceeds power as the preeminent
goal. It affects the issues raised and their outcome, it has changed
employment patterns in Washington; it has transformed politics;
and it has subverted values. It has led good people to do things
that are morally questionable, if not reprehensible. It has cut
a deep gash, if not inflicted a mortal wound, in the concept of
Private interests have tried to influence legislative and
administrative outcomes through the use of money for a long time.
The great Daniel Webster was on retainer from the Bank of the
United States and at the same time was one of its greatest defenders
in the Congress. But never before in the modern age has political
money played the pervasive role that it does now By comparison.
the Watergate period seems almost quaint.
There was a time when people came to Washington out of a spirit
of public service and idealism. Engendering this spirit was one
of John F. Kennedy's most important contributions. Then Richard
Nixon, picking up from George Wallace, and then Ronald Reagan,
in particular, derided "federal bureaucrats." The spirit
of public service was stepped on, but not entirely extinguished.
But more than ever, Washington has become a place where people
come or remain in order to benefit financially from their government
In 1998, according to the requirements of the Lobbying Disclosure
Act of 1995, there were close to 11,500 lobbyists wandering the
halls of Congress. (Until the act went into effect, there were
no real figures on how many lobbyists populated Washington.) However,
this number isn't inclusive. A lot of people say they don't lobby-but
they do something that seems a lot like it. Megafixer Clark Clifford
solemnly maintained that he didn't lobby. Superlawyer Robert Strauss
made the same claim. Perhaps these eminences were above betaking
themselves to Capitol Hill to navigate the marble floors or to
wait outside the Senate or House chamber, or a committee room,
with the riffraff, hoping to nab a target, but they knew the power
of their names and their phone calls and their social connections.
And they could always send minions to do their bidding with the
lawmakers or important staff members, who knew who sent them.
In the past, law firms didn't engage in lobbying to the extent
they do now, and sometimes the firms hired nonlawyers to do their
influencing. And now there are small firms established for the
purpose of lobbying just one member, or one Congressional committee;
they're usually staffed by people who had been close to the member,
in one case by a powerful congressman's reputed mistress.
More than ever, corporations or other interests that want
to influence the Congress hire former Members of Congress or their
aides as lobbyists, in order to ingratiate themselves with the
current members. The former members have distinct advantages:
they can go on the floor of the House or Senate and use their
chambers' official dining rooms; even better, former House members
can use the House gym, where a lot of business gets done. (A study
by the New York Times found that in the 1970s only three percent
of members who left Congress for one reason or another went to
K Street-the downtown corridor that has come to symbolize the
lawyer-lobbyist complex-and in the nineties twenty-three percent
The Buying of the Congress, a book by Charles Lewis of the
Center for Public Integrity, published in 1998, said that from
1991 to 1996 at least fifteen percent of former Senate aides and
at least fourteen percent of former senior House aides became
registered lobbyists. The main sources of this pool of access-sharks
were the "money committees," such as the House and Senate
Commerce Committees, which handle such issues as banking and telecommunications.
Sometimes the former aides so draw on their expertise and are
so drawn into the legislative considerations that they in effect
still act as staff members, writing legislation, except for a
lot more money.
Sometimes a geographic region is spotted as an opportunity.
In recent years, Latin America-with a growing economy increased
privatization, need for expensive "infrastructure" projects,
and increased demand for U.S. goods (the second-largest market
after Canada)-has become more and more attractive to Washington's
lawyers and lobbyists. According to the National Journal, in the
spring of 1998 former Clinton National Security Advisor Anthony
Lake, who had supposedly returned to an academic life, and a former
Commerce Department official, David Rothkopf, who had specialized
in "emerging markets," formed their own consulting firm,
which charged clients at least $250,000 a year for "strategic
and political advice about investments in Latin America."
According to the same article, a Washington law firm, Verner,
Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson, and Hand, has fielded three of
its former political stars-Bob Dole, Lloyd Bentsen, and Ann Richards-to
drum up business in Latin America. So a former presidential candidate,
a former vice-presidential candidate, and a former governor became,
without apparent embarrassment, hustlers exploiting a new target
Ann Wexler, one of Washington's premier lobbyists, knows a
lot about how Washington has changed in the past twenty-five years.
One day in the fall of 1997 she talked to me over lunch about
how the new role of money has transformed Washington. Wexler,
sixtyish, has short-cropped dark hair, brown eyes, and more energy
than most people, in part because she enjoys life as well as the
game. She has prospered as the head of her own firm, which she
started the day after she left the Carter White House in January
1981. In 1983 she was astute enough to acquire as her partner
Nancy Reynolds, who had worked for Ronald Reagan for ten years.
When she left the White House, Wexler, who had been in charge
of "outreach"-working with outside groups in support
of Carter's objectives-took with her what was believed to be the
biggest Rolodex in town. She now has twenty-five lobbyists working
with her, and in 1997 recruited as president former Representative
Bob Walker, who had just retired from Congress and was one of
Newt Gingrich's closest associates.
"This whole thing blew apart in the eighties, when congressmen
could raise all this money," Wexler told me. "Before,
they'd attend twenty-five-dollar barbecues.
"It was the development of PACs in the eighties-when
people figured out that if they gave money through the PACs they
could get access, they could get their phone calls returned. Just
as the unions used dues for political activity, businesses began
to use salary deductions for PACs. [Wexler's firm, like similar
lobbying and law firms around town, has its own PAC.] The Hill
figured it out. If you're a committee chairman, you could raise
fifty thousand even one hundred thousand dollars. Then they started
leadership PACs-that's another extortion. Then the leader uses
the money to try to gain higher office."
Under this last innovation, congressional leaders and would-be
leaders and powerful committee chairmen created their own PACs,
which they used to dole out money to win gratitude and advancement
within their chamber-and to maintain power. Recent examples are
former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell and House Majority
Whip Tom DeLay. DeLay's bestowing of campaign funds-especially
on the class of 1994-helped him win his leadership post in 1995,
and to maintain it.
One of the first things then-House Appropriations Committee
chairman Bob Livingston, of Louisiana, did when he decided in
the spring of 1998 that he would like to succeed Gingrich as Speaker
was to establish his own PAC (B.O.B.S.PAC, for "building
our bases"). As Appropriations chairman, Livingston was in
a position to raise a great deal of money, and he did. Livingston
contributed to over ninety Republican House candidates: $5,000
from his PAC, $1,000 from his own campaign funds (he usually ran
for Congress virtually unopposed), and served as a conduit for
earmarked checks from business PACs to Republican candidates.
Rivals within the same party for a higher leadership post
compete to be the more beneficent. In 1998, Republican leaders
raised a great deal more money than their Democratic counterparts
did; they were the ones in power. Over the two-year election cycle
Republican leaders raised more than nineteen million dollars for
fifty leadership PACs, while Democratic leaders raised a mere
Wexler said, "We're dealing with a system where the members
don't feel they can raise the money where they live. There's a
panic among members. I get calls for money from people I've never
heard of. The system's out of control."
The issue before the Senate in the spring of 1998 was a freighted
one, a matter of historical importance. The question was whether
to expand NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, founded
after the Second World War to provide stability in Europe, which
it had done successfully. The proposition was to include Poland
Hungary, and the Czech Republic, with other countries in Centrai
Europe and the Baltics to follow in 2010.
There were strong reasons not to do so. Russia, whose cooperation
the United States needed in all sorts of spheres (Bosnia, Kosovo,
Iraq, and arms control, among others), and whose own stability
was very much in the interest of the U.S., was vehemently against
it. Russia saw a threat on its borders, and an insult. Moreover,
by expanding NATO the original members became committed to the
defense of countries or areas whose defense might lack public
support. A successful alliance was in danger of being destabilized.
"We'll be back on a hair-trigger," said Senator
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who usually saw further than most of
his colleagues. New York limes foreign affairs columnist Thomas
L. Friedman in 1997 called the expansion "the Whitewater
of the Clinton foreign policy.
By the time the matter reached the Senate floor in late April
1998, the Clinton Administration had so committed the United States
to the new policy that to turn back would have been an embarrassing
retreat-in the eyes of the country and our allies. The three countries
had already been formally invited to join NATO. The administration
had rushed into the policy without thinking it through-in large
part to head off certain ethnic-American voting blocs from going
to the Republicans, in particular to Bob Dole, who was espousing
In turn, the administration used these groups to drum up support
in the Senate for the expansion.
But there was another force behind the approval of NATO expansion:
defense contractors. The enlarging of NATO promised a lucrative
new market, a welcome boon after business had fallen off with
the end of the cold war. Even the Contract with America, the Republican
agenda presented by Newt Gingrich and others after they took over
the House in the 1994 election, called for NATO expansion and
encouraged greater "inter-operability of military equipment."
Translated, that meant that the new NATO members would have to
buy sophisticated weapons from American defense companies. But
since these countries couldn't afford them, according to Lars-Erik
Nelson in the New York Daily News, the Pentagon had established
a $15 billion fund to guarantee loans to these countries to buy
According to a March 30, 1998, article in the New York Times,
by Katharine Q. Seelye, a study done for the Times found that
the six largest military contractors had spent $51 million on
lobbying fees-which included not only the salaries of in-house
lobbyists but also fees for others from outside the firms-from
1996 to the end of 1997. In that period, the six companies also
expanded their contributions to congressional campaign committees.
The defense industry was in fact the most generous contributor
to the congressional campaigns, the Times said, having lavished
$32.3 million on them since the collapse of communism in 1991.
Not all of the lobbying was for NATO expansion, of course,
but that was the industry's main concern in those years, because
of the lucrative new markets. If donations by computer and technology
firms that do military work were added, the Times said, the total
would "dwarf the lobbyist effort of any other industry."
The chief lobbying group on behalf of NATO expansion was the
U.S. Committee to Expand NATO, whose president, Bruce L. Jackson,
was also director of strategic planning for Lockheed Martin. The
Times also said that arms manufacturers gave support to the ethnic
groups who backed NATO membership for their native countries.
The Senate approved the expansion on April 30 overwhelmingly-by
a vote of 80-19-after a few hours of debate spread over four days...
Lately, indirect ways of using money to influence a Member
of Congress have come into vogue. A lobbyist for very big interests
told me, "What does a savvy lobbyist do? He remembers that
the most important thing for a Member of Congress is to get reelected."
So the lobbyist would point out the "back-home reason"
for a member to vote a certain way. To reinforce the "back-home"
argument, lobbyists have created grass-roots support, or the appearance
of it, for the corporation's or industry's position.
This approach, pioneered by the lobbyist Ann Wexler, has spawned
another new industry in Washington: whole companies whose sole
reason for being is to stir up grass-roots support for their client's
position. Professional political operatives are hired to mobilize
the local citizenry around an issue-economic, environmental-that
affects, directly or indirectly, the client's business. Such groups
are often organized to counter environmentalists who are objecting
to a new plant or supporting a certain regulation.
The people, organized from outside, are encouraged to call
on their representative in Washington or in his home district;
to write letters, send faxes, make phone calls, organize town
meetings, get someone in the area to write a letter to the editor,
or even an op-ed piece-all to create the illusion of "grass-roots
support." Even the National Association of Broadcasters,
which ostensibly represents local stations but is dominated by
the networks and their owned-and-operated stations, has retained
a Washington company specializing in "grass roots."
But despite the importance of this relatively new form of
influence/pressure, another lobbyist told me, it has to be paired
with money. Pat Griffin said, "You can do money alone, but
it helps to have grass-roots support. You can have money without
grass roots, but not the other way around."
Of course, organizing and executing such a campaign is expensive
in itself. So these "grass roots" efforts, sown and
nurtured from Washington, are another, indirect, and sometimes
deceptive, way for interests to spend money to further their agenda.
As the "grass roots" method became widely used,
a still newer approach was added, as was a new term in the lobbyists'
liturgy, "grass tops."
"Grass tops" are the opinion-makers in a town or
an area who are called on to help the cause of a lobbyist or local
company. A lobbyist said, "Sometimes they have to be induced,
and sometimes they're paid-that's not uncommon." These "grass
roots" and "grass tops" efforts, in which Washington
pros stir up, and even pay, people who might not be motivated
to take action on their own are sometimes referred to by the more
honest-or cynical-lobbyists as "Astroturf."
A lobbyist explained, "New techniques get invented as
old ones get discounted."
Given its combined money and power and ability to create ostensible
grass-roots activity, the broadcast industry has become, in the
words of Senator John McCain, "the most powerful industry
in Washington." The broadcasters have been able to resist
McCain's efforts to get them to provide free airtime for political
campaigns or to pay anything at all for their ultra-valuable use
of the traditional broadcast spectrum, making the United States
one of the few countries that gives away the broadcast spectrum-a
public asset-for nothing. (Parts of the spectrum for more specialized
uses, such as cell phones and paging systems, are now auctioned
off in order to bring in government revenue.) The broadcasters
have also been able to fend off any serious impositions on the
money they make off political advertising-even though they are
required to offer such advertising at a reduced fee.