>> bundling, my name is sam, i'm from minnesota. is a fund-raising technique where a single person collects a whole bunch of checks and the diligence of them all at once. so even though there's individual limits for how much can be given, a bundler can collect hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars and deliver it all in one big bundle. >> so there was a practice in washington by lobbyists and lobbying firms to have little lunchtime meetings were a candidate with come in and speak to the partners of a law firm, and they were all expected to give the maximum amount of money as individuals to that candidate, but it was clear that the lobbyists associated with a law firm, lobbying activities of the law firm, had sort of organized it and that person was a bundler. in some cases on checks they indicated at the bottom in the notation where the money came

from in terms of bundling as was the actual individual giving money. so around america we would have bundling parties, and a lobbyists helped direct that money and, therefore, later had better access to people. that was the dude. they also had an increasing campaign money. i mentioned 4 billion in 2010. it was 5 billion in 2008 for all candidates. primary, general election and all the federal candidates. it's going up quickly. that amount of cash, data from amount of money, the amount of money that members were going after as well as presidential candidates caused some concern about reform. and the proximity of votes to campaign contributions, it's still an issue. in the "washington post" just a few days ago, there was a front-page article about having campaign fund-raising event on

capitol hill within a few days, within a few hours of a vote on issues related to the campaign contributions. that has been going on for years, and that was part of the lead up to the reform, and is a loophole right now that people are concerned about. they guess to members, the travel to members of congress as i mentioned before, are important. surveys, one of the surveys i did physical offers congressional election study surveying 38,000 people in the united states before and after the 2008 election showed that people were very concerned about lobbying. in fact, in 2006 was the most important issue. scandal in the lobby was the most important issue even though we had a war going on in 2006. in 2008 it became the third most important issue after the economy and health care. anger with congress i think

partially is related to the perception, it's not the reality, of the relationship that congress has with organized special interests. that led to reforms also. and the fact that the ethics committee and the house and senate really were not doing anything about it. no investigations. they went very light on members, and part of this might be because the pew review. when you have peers reviewing you and that person has to be very powerful, you're careful about coming or careful anyway but you're careful about really going hard after an individual that looks like they have crossed the line. in fact, with respect to abramoff and the 26 people who were investigated, the ethics committee and house had no investigations over that. then there's the lack of enforcement that became a concern.

the enforcement of the lobbying law is done by the u.s. attorney of the district of columbia. there have been thousands of referrals by the house and the senate, according to senator dodd who is chairman of the rules committee when this report came out. thousands of referrals and no investigations. so people were concerned about that at the increase in lobbying expenditures also became a focus, and as you can see by the figures it's grown dramatically. the estimate in 2010 was done in september. it's likely to be even more than this, but let's look at what this means. in 2009 it was three pointer $40 billion. billion dollars. that's $8 million per member per year.

that's $291 million per month, $67 million per week. almost $10 million her day, and $412,500 per hour. this place is awash with money, and it's only from the federal registered lobbyist. it's probably a factor of three times this. so people became concerned about this outside of washington. this key group movement certainly mentioned it. the press mentioned it. the hill is not moving too hard on reform since 2007, which we will talk about. another cause of reform was the revolving door. in a study from 1998-2006, 43% of members who left congress and who were eligible to lobby became registered lobbyists. no one ever wants believed that

you leave washington. daily for a while and they get sucked right back in. what can you do in washington? you can get into the advocacy game. there's also the case tree project. does anybody know what the k street project is? help me out. go ahead. >> major lobbying firms were hired on partisan lines? >> yes, they call the k street project in every tuesday babies when this our staff were leaving, helping staff get jobs, but also when members left they helped them. but also they watched associations and who they hired, and tom delay put heat on three big associations for not hiring or looks like they were going to hire republicans. it, let me tell you, was done by democrats also. they just weren't as well organize and he didn't name it. it is still going on in

formally, although there are big signs if you are caught pressuring an organization to hire somebody. and we'll get into those fines later on. the idea was, well, we want to get our people into the firms. put pressure on the firms, bows between democrats and republicans. they do that naturally anyway. the k street project is named in law, and there is a reform that restricts that activity from the hill. and it has not changed in terms of its got a nontransparent way, and people to help others get jobs, but it's not done by the party leadership. and then there was the case, cases of people negotiating for jobs. there was a chair of the energy and natural resources committee that was negotiating for a job with the pharmaceutical association, big pharma.

while he had before his committee the medicare prescription drug bill. and it became a huge scandal. others were doing the same thing. it was sort of happening less visibly for many years where people were sitting on a committee, dealing with an issue, that later they would represent or an association. huge conflict of interest. obama wanted to reduce the revolving door, stopped the revolving door, people in the government and out of government. and the reforms wanted that, too. if you look at this come it looks a bit complex. the network analysis, in june 2006, and don't worry, it will not be on the final exam, of people moving in and out of hhs come in and out of the white house come in and out of the finance committee and the house,

senate, part become in the science committee, department of labor, individual senators, kennedy was known for helping a lot of people. these lines show the interaction of the revolving door going to agencies, going to committees, going from committees to agencies and back into the white house. if you look at this, this clears it up a little bit of 98-2006. this is a network analysis of people going in and out of the white house that were federal registered lobbyists from law firms and lobbying firms. this is what obama wanted to stop. and it did, actually. sort of. we will get into that. let's take a can dump, these declines but they were both successful in getting people in and out of the white house. cassidy and associates. wechsler, now wechsler walker. used to be in the white house

and she had a lot of people understaffed or in the white house going back and forth. hogan hartson, timmons which is a small firm in and out. he used to be head of legislative affairs. these other triangles are just one individual in and out. so you can see that there was a pattern. a significant pattern of people in and out of the white house. the president thought there was a huge conflict of interest. and so one of the first things he passed, the executive order was for the first time in the history of the united states, he said no federal registered lobbyists can go into government, into the white house as mentioned, but also into executive branch level appointments, unless they go through a process of exceptions. now, the exceptions are up to 26 the last count, out of several

hundred, that really stop people going in and out of the white house. there's some consequences for that which i will talk about later, this gives you a graphic description of what the president was trying to stop. if you look at reform in 2006 to the president, i'm not going to talk about all these, but you should realize there's a lot of warm gush a lot of reforms going on. that means on the lobbyist and the mbs of congress really like to do that, rather than changing ethics on themselves. and they were criticized for that but the worst ethics reforms on members. there were also rules and procedural reforms. the most important one was related to your marks. your marks not only for appropriations but it marks for tax code their marks, but also authorization in marks. we here in the press, we read in

the press about the appropriations earmarks, that there were new reforms on the. there were also procedural reforms in terms of the way the minority was treated, and some of them have been ignored. there were also reforms with respect to the budget process and a bright of others in terms of rules of procedure reforms. there's campaign-finance reform. for 75 years we have built up campaign finance reform to have more transparency, more limits on contributions. limiting, we'll get into this later, limiting the lobbyists from bundling over 15,000, friday of other things, and then along came the citizens united case, which really change things significantly. and then we also had redistricting reform. there was a group of people, i was on a committee, still am, to try to get commission to do a redistricting because of the

partisan and bipartisan redistricting that's going on to create seats, i'm one of them, that things it undermines the capacity to have more moderate in the house of representatives. california passed an initiative inc. 2010. 2008 they passed the initiative for the state legislature to the commission to do it. and now they have an initiative to do it at the federal level for congressional districts to have the commission do it. now we have 12 states that have some form of commission that is redistricting where they have more competitive seats. the idea is that it had a commission to accommodate equal population, but you also bring in the variable, let's have more competition. we will see in california whether they can do that. after the 2000 census there was only one district out of 53 in california in the first election that was competitive, meaning

people one by 55% or less. this last election it went up three, which was a very competitive year, and yet one would think that you could have a few more competitive districts than three. so that's part of the reformed stream that went on. then the president, executive branch as i mentioned a couple of times, pushed for reforms coming out of promises in the campaign. what was the promise in the campaign? the campaign promise was, i intend to tell corporate lobbyists their days of setting the agenda for washington are over. they have not funded my campaign, and for the first day as president i will launch the most sweeping ethics reform in history. well, he launched the reform. he promised to have no federal registered lobbyist in his campaign, when he was campaigning.

he did get 60% of his money from small contributions which helps. he had an ungodly amount of money, $745 million which helps. he didn't take public finance as he promised he would early in the campaign, but he changed his mind. and mccain did take public finance and he got 43.1 million. welcome he got lots of other money from other sources, which helped him but not 745. so both mccain and obama promised not to have campaign -- not the federal registered lobbyists in the campaign. one and thousands showed that mccain had 42 of his top campaign staffers were recently lobbyists or advocates. 23 campaign staff for obama were recently lobbyists or advocates. and i'm including advocates are there because people like senator daschle was a key adviser in the campaign.

but he was not a federally -- federal registered lobbyists as most people in washington think he is a very effective advocate and that gets us to the question of what is a lobbyists? the definition of it which will get into later, and if you look at these data, they are different than what i presented the other day. i went to the office of public records to check, and my earlier date on this are wrong. so throw those out. these are the latest. you can see that we have about 12,000 to 14,000 federal registered lobbyists. it hasn't dropped dramatically as i asserted. from a secondary source in my previous lecture. so i wanted to correct that. yes, we make mistakes. it didn't seem quite right to me, and i have been using those for a while. i went back and look at these. why are these different? the methodology is these are the

unique registrations, not multiple registrations. for example, of a law firm has an individual that's registered for five different kinds of things. they have five different registrations sometimes. so this is a more accurate number of the actual number of people in the business that are federal registered lobbyists that actually registered. now you've seen this before. i want to repeat it. that if you look at the people actually in the business in washington, there are over 40,000 people who are listed in the government affairs director. why would they have been in indy government affairs directory unless they were involved in government affairs, trying to influence government? they are in there. they are proud of it. it is used as a way to find people by certain sectors like energy, and viacom education, et cetera, to see who's involved in the business. and if you look at, and we've

done this, i've done this through my center, at the people supporting those people, support staff. it's up to 87,058. the actual numbers in this book. so the business, the industry is much larger than 12,000 people if you take it was going to say they are in government affairs, people supporting them. that doesn't count people producing television ads, doing survey research, people anything takes in washington, d.c., better in the advocacy business to a great extent. it doesn't include people who are doing blogs, working the internet. so the 12,000 is the tip of the iceberg, and the money associated with a 12,000 that's reported in those earlier tables, that's just the tip of the iceberg, in my opinion. i take a factor of three, approximately, times the figure.

$3.4 billion. let's call it $9 billion that is being spent in washington at any time. that's a lot of money awash, along with the 4 billion in the last election, election campaign. let's call it 10 to $15 billion of money in washington. that is an issue. who should be called a lobbyist? well, i briefly talked about this the other day, but let's get into in greater detail. the legislative disclosure act of 1995 recommended and 2007 said that if you have over one contact, in other words, to contacts or more of members of congress, senior staff, not junior staff, and a list of executive branch executives,

public officials, these appointees, it's over 5000. and you spend 20% of your time on -- this is a quotation from the act, lobbyist activity. not lobbying activity but lobbyists activity which means contacts and efforts in support of the contact. and you are, have an income of $5000 per lobbyist each, and that is each quarter, use the semi-annually, and 20,000 for an organization like a law firm or some other association, you must register. you must register with the house and senate. you must indicate who you are working for. you must indicate the policy that you are working on. you must in some cases identify the bill that your lobbying on.

and this applies to people lobbying the executive branch as well ask congress. that is very different than all of these other people that are in the government affairs director. some of them don't have direct contact and they don't spend 20% of their time, and so they're out of it even though they may be making more money from an organization, you need to all three of these things. so there's some problem, some loopholes in the law. in 2007 after basically three to four year battle over what should we don't about lobbying reform, the honest leadership and open government act was passed september 2007. it commanded a variety of statutes to its in your hand that. i won't go through those. including the indian assistance act, because the issue of tribes giving money to obama -- pardon

me, abramoff came up and mccain had hearings on the. i happened to them. at the hearing and give suggestions for change so that they would not have anymore problems in the future. that's part of this also. and also, they admitted the pension provisions in civil service retirement because you luger pension now under this act if you are convicted as a duke cunningham was taking bribes and breaking the rules that exist in this act, in the previous act. now, if you look at the act itself, this is great detail that you don't have for yourselves, but i just want to summarize it very quickly. first of all, they said that within three days of a job negotiation you had to go to the ethics committee ideally before

negotiations, and identify that you have a negotiation going on if you're a member of congress, house and senate, and it's related to wha what you were dog on the committee or your assignment. and you have to recuse yourself from anything related to that particular organization that is offering your job or your having negotiations for. there's a two-year revolving door. there's a two-year limit on the senate for senior staff and for senators. and in some cases members in one case, senator lott, resigned his seat before this went into effect in order to have a one year limit on his activity. he is now a federal registered lobbyists. and in the house they didn't change. there was great pressure to change it into years. the house kept the one year revolving door as did the two

years revolving door in executive branch. there's some positions in the executive branch related to intelligence defense where you have a lifetime prohibition from lobbying the companies or the organizations that you are associated with. there's a limit that spouses cannot lobby. there's the gift ban, a ban on travel. a great detail on that, very controversial because there were lots of times when people would take it gets out to their tuesday thursday club. they go to california on a private jet. on thursday and it was a lot better than what happened this last weekend with a couple that with commercial aircraft. we will get into this later because some of the nonprofit organizations like the aspen institute would bring people regularly to aspen for seminars,

and he didn't want to have limits on that. so i think it's a loophole. i will get in my -- get in trouble with my friends at the aspen institute and other institutes, but when there's an activity going on with a nonprofit organization you go to the ethics committee to get permission and you can take a private jet to those places, as long as there isn't a federal registered lobbyist on the applet. frequently there's a ceo on the airplane that helps fund the aspen institute, and they're able to talk or council for the corporation. i think that it's a significant loophole. we have specific provisions in the 2000 act that prohibits members and their staff from quote, influencing hiring decisions of private organizations on the sole basis of political partisan political

gain. there's a fine and imprisonment up to 15 years for this. there have been no investigations, and no one has been fined and no one has gone to jail over this. and i think that if you look at the iron law of reciprocity, i will help you if you help me come if you're a former staff member elite and you want to hire somebody, there is an informal network of hiring people you know and hiring people from your own party. it still goes on. it's hard to legally prevent that from going on. and as i mentioned before, there's limits on charter to charter jet travel and gifts, and there is theoretically full public disclosure of lobbying activities. of those, through a federal registered lobbyist. four years academics like myself and reformers and the outside

wanted electronic forms on the hill that were easily searchab searchable. i appeared before the rules committee in 95 to push this. they did it again in 2007. finally, it happen. so now they have the forms for the house and senate that our electronic. they are searchable, and it's producing a lot of good research but it also brings more transparency. however, there are all kinds of problems in terms of filling out the registration form. there's a lot of freedom in terms of indicating who you are lobbying, but also what you are lobbying, and how much you're spending on it. so yeah, it's transparent, easier to get to, but we still have some problems in terms of equality of the material. this is what scares lobbyists. there's a 50,000 to $200,000 fine and a criminal penalty up to five years for knowing and

corrupt failure to comply with the act. at that point, there were a lot of people in town that said, gee, should i be registered? attest that are huge penalties. if you are registered and you get into trouble. i that heads of firms in town say that they reviewed who the federal registered lobbyists were in their firms and they decided to be registered and. i've got lots of discussions with people that said that, we're trying to be good citizens but, you know, if we register, and somewhat investigates and we get into trouble, we'd it's better not to be registered because don't its investing those who are not registered. it's an issue that we can get back to later. because there was a lot of information about what was going on in terms of the invitation of the 95 act and previous acts to

that, the congress decided to give the government accountability office the right to have, the responsibility of having annual audits. this has caused people to focus on the outside because they come in and they audit what people have been doing, who has been supporting them in the firm, because that becomes part of the reporting requirement. they are looking at lobbyists compliant and disclosure by federal registered lobbyists. they are not looking at yet people who may be should be registered and are not registered in washington. they are looking at people are registered. so again that's created an incentive for some people to say wait a minute, maybe i don't have to register. if i don't register their won't be an auditor also, there's an annual report, annual report by gal, and annual report required

by both the ethics committee and the house and senate as to what they have been doing. and the conclusion of their investigation, and again they haven't really pursued this heavily. there's also a form of a public integrity office as separate from the ethics committee in the house of representatives chaired i david skaggs, former member from colorado who don't appropriations maybe -- committee. well respected guy, they did a series of investigations of eight members for example, recently in terms of earmarks and campaign contributions. one of them is a former member who passed away, john murtha, and others. and they also investigated maxine waters who now is being investigated and there's going to be a trial before the ethics committee and the house of representatives.

they also represented wrangell, former chair of the represented wrangell, former chair of the ways and means committee in the house of representatives. and they said that publicly, the hole three was if you send these things publicly you and there is or you will put pressure on the ethics committee to do something. there's great conflict between the two, and lots of members who mumble and say we should get rid of the house of public integrity. is causing too much trouble. but i think it's going to be very hard to get rid of, and i think the republicans are fully in support of it, for example. if you look at the disclosure of, further disclosure of activities by members of congress, they have to certify and sign a document that they have not given gifts or traveled that would violate senate and house rules. where did this come from? if used to be a wicked tickets

to to games, boxes at basketball events and hockey were readily given and not recorded. by the way, jack abramoff had a restaurant. yo a restaurant downtown where members and staff would come there and eat and the bill never came and they could drink wine. the bill never came, which against existing rules, and they're investigating that. there were literally dozens of members of congress and staff that would go to that restaurant, signatures. and that really didn't go anywhere. they investigated it but obviously they were breaking the law. so some of this is related to that activity. if you look at the question of transparency, there's new transparency with respect to the question of bundling.

and the bundling aspect is that it pays lobbyists, federal registered lobbyists, okay, could be an advocate that is not registered. if they bundle over $15,000 semiannual and campaign contributions for any federal elected official, or a leadership pac, and the leadership vacuum that is when you coming to congress, even freshmen have been now, it's a pact that they create, they come from a safe district and the tournament and give them money to others. the leadership has always had them but other people that have also. henry waxman had them, has one. so if you give to one of those packs, over 15,000 in bundled money, then it becomes, you have to report it. lobby is sort of like this. because they didn't have to go out and bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars in bundling

and so it was like a lot to do it all time, my gosh, this is great but i don't have to do it anymore because they all stopped before 15,000. there are other ways to do it, other loopholes. it requires lobbyists to disclose to the secretary of the senate and house clerk campaign contributions and famous to presidential libraries, to inaugural committees or entities controlled by common name for honoring members of congress. this is the issue related to represented wrangell. and it is the agent associated with many research senators -- research center is named after members of congress. i am involved in the establishment of the association of centers for the association of congress, and there are over 20 -- pardon me -- that are named after senators or congressmen. there are no limits on how

outside interest getting money to those particular centers. if you continue, there was earmarked reform. earmark reform i want to summarize, you don't have to read it off the screen. basically that you -- to earmark reform just before this reform would too, there were 15,000 plus their marks. and in what is of course a provision in appropriation bill but also a tax bill and authorization that nearly caps, put in before this went through in a non-transparent way for individuals, corporations or a particular district, a road, bridge, whatever. and now it's under the requirement of the earmark reform which went through with this package is that you have to identify the individual advocating for the denmark. before there was some geographic quadrants in the act that were

put in after a conference committee report and you didn't know what was until he started figuring out, it's in west virginia. senator byrd from west virginia, or it's in alaska. kennett anybody's name, no justification. has to be a person's name, justification for it. it has to be up on a website for 48 hours at least, and judges sign an affidavit. no one in your family or the individual advocating it would benefit from it. so it made it easier to vote on it, and it made it easier for people in the outside who are critical of these to do something about it. so we went from 15,000 earmarks down to 8000. we now have creeped back up to 9800. they are smaller now. there's great pressure on members to have their marks i the local public, local public

officials, mayors, city managers. so they see on this website who's getting earmarks. so i had never segued a minute, this is putting a lot of pressure on the because there's more pressure to add even more in marks because they know who is getting them and they are not getting them and they are very concerned about that. earmarks have had other reforms in the house of representatives, congressman o.b., the chairman to progress in committee in the house of representatives but other limits on them. know in marks this last cycle could come out of this committee for a for-profit organization. and also you could not have your name associated with in marks. this is where represented maxine waters got into a confrontation on the floor of the house of representatives when she had earmarked money for the l.a.

school systems have been turned around and sent it to a school that was named after her, and that was pulled out as an earmark from the floor on the house of representatives when congressman obie found out about it. it was quite confrontational and the press covered that. as i mentioned before, restrictions on travel. and there were also a series of things that president obama did. now, let's go through these in some detail. for the first time as i mentioned before, he restricts people that were federal registered lobbyists from going into the executive branch and into the white house. and also it was before, there was a two-year restriction on the way out. by the way, just historical note, clinton had that also but within a few days before the end

of his administration, he dropped it so a lot of people would leave and go into the lobby is this. but it was put back in by bush and obama. there is restrictions of gifts to the executive branch officials in the executive order that was passed, the first day in office. there was a gift ban before that but it was very specific now. even more specific. so if you're in the executive branch, you and your appointees don't even accept a cup of coffee from anyone on the outside. that's the best rule. he also required new appointees to sign a code of ethics. that's quite extensive. it's in the website of the white house, the office of ethics, headed by norm eisen. there were limits on lobbying t.a.r.p. you could not do it in person.

you have to do it in writing and it had to be public, and yet there were other ways around that, at the lobbying for the distribution of money to banks and insurance companies and others, by really top level lobbyists were restricted. and there was restrictions on lobbying, the stem this package, the so-called american recovery and reinvestment act. again, you'd only do it in writing. you could not do in person if you are a federal registered lobbyists. and there are restrictions if you're a federally registered lobbyists in the last two years and all these cases the last two years, from serving on commissions and advisory council, over a thousand of them. and so for example, the department of defense may have a council that is looking into a new weapon system or evaluating an old weapon system, or maybe selecting a tanker for the air

force, national case, people that were federal registered lobbyists. restrictions on those people serving on the. the lobbyists do not like this and you will see that people that come to speak to us don't like it. they think that it restricts certain amount of expertise and knowledge, that maybe there should be a judgment that's a little more subtle of a conflict of interest rather than just banning everybody. these are very controversial things that occur. there have been exceptions in terms of appointments of individuals as i mentioned, currently over 20 and his administration. and there is a procedure for doing that that makes those decisions. the first one being assistant secretary in dod a few days after this came out. there was an exception for that, for that individual. so the question before us is the question that i started with.

and the question that i want you to think about and we're going to discuss it, and we will run this like a quaker church. that if you don't say anything we are going to just sit here and tell you feel the movement to stand up, or express yourselves, about whether you think obama has changed washington. you know although but more about what he has done. has he changed the way of washington? which was yet again an issue in this campaign this last midterm election. people were upset with congress. they are upset with the way washington works. emily. [inaudible] >> that was recorded not by an academic organizations but by "the wall street journal," and i followed up with it. they had accurate data on that.

>> their definition of recent was less than two years what they meant by a recent lobbyis lobbyists. >> in some cases they moved from washington lobbying writing to the campaign. it's quite a typical thing. as we mentioned in this class before, people that are doing campaigns for individuals giving to campaigns for issues, and they get in, they come from a campaign for the president or individuals that are running for congress, and then they continue to lobby for the organization that they're working for. in fact, if you look at senator reid he had many people on the ground that were federal registered lobbyists helping doing the ground, the fieldwork, get out the vote and other sorts of things in the campaign to do that. especially campaigns that effort competitive. it is a difficult thing, and i was surprised there weren't more

people at a higher level in both of these campaigns. but i put it up because there was a promise by campaign and obama not to have federal registered lobbyists, or senior advocates. it's a little shade of gray in their campaigns. what do you think? have things changed? i know you've been in this business for a while. >> i don't think things have changed. i think it's something like we have talked about, lobbyists have this negative connotation in most parts of the country, and i think it's a nice thing to say that i think while it may have changed a lot in the white house and executive branch in general, nothing has changed. on hill nothing has changed. a lot of the agencies, i mean, i think it's still the same. driving kind of like underground. >> so some people think the president did this for political reasons just to get elected, but, you know, he did it come he

pushed for this kind of reform in illinois turkey pushed in the senate immediately got, maybe he was thinking about running for the president, but before he was leaving, he really believed that it needs to be changed. and so i think that's real. the question is hasn't really changed? it's sort of like a glacier on the side of mount rainier. it's going down in one direction, you can melt it a little bit but you're really not change the direction of it. we have the right to organize. the freedom of speech and a silly. we have the right to petition government, and this is all part of those rights, right? anyone want to take the case that he has changed things? so you're all realists. you don't care what do you think it needs to be changed? sam?

[inaudible] >> most people do, i would imagine across the country. specs we have been changed by living within the beltway? >> no, but i mean every day that we brought it up a lot the past few days, but one man's advocate is another man's lobbyist. and that man's advocate is the other man's lobbyist. and so people are critical of lobbying unless it has to do with their own rights. gun rights, pro-choice, pro-life, boy scouts, church, whatever. all of these things have lobbyists, and so you are critical in the abstract, but when you get right down to it, he doesn't lobby, right? they have a huge budget and 41 million people behind it. they do lobby and we're going to meet the chief lobbyist, and he is proud to be a lobbyist. but, you know, if your member of the aarp out in rural iowa or

somewhere, don't mean to pick on iowa too much here, they don't think of it as a lobbying organization. yes, back here. [inaudible] >> perhaps like the wining and dining, those have changed, but the partisan nature, if you look at some the democratic lobbying firms, they have been here in 2009. >> they made a lot of money. >> a didn't do as well. so i think there is some favoritism still at play here. >> also when you have an act of congress go a very active congress, you have a stainless package, the health care package, cap-and-trade, financial reform, it was a banner year for issues where people swarmed around and wanted to influence it. and, therefore, i think we will see the amount of federal registered lobbying money way up

fishy. i think as with his 3.6. i think we'll probably be a lot more. let alone all the other stuff that is going on. yes? [inaudible] this would have been kind of a teaching moment, strategic the country all the positive aspect about lobbying, and i think what they touched on yesterday was the different roles that lobbyists play in terms of been like a translator for an interpreter or sometimes a spokesperson. and so sometimes lobbyist need to kind of teaching their clients about the rules of the game and the legislative process, and that's not a negative thing at all. that's just educating the public about these other positive things. so i think that's what the obama administration hasn't sort of taken that approach to it, that they really made lobbyists villains even more so than beforehand. >> if you haven't are made up your mind about an issue, you

sort of what you find out about the consequences of your action from either side. you want to bring in people who know a lot about the issue to tell you about it. and/or some senators, senator kennedy used to do all the time. he would bring into sides to asia to let them debate in front of each other. i always thought it was a good idea because they don't spin it as much, and so in any state legislature, the congress or city hall, you want to find out what are the consequences of this, and who expresses it best. citizens do but also people who know the policy do on either side. the theory of pluralism is that you always have competition on either side. sometimes you don't. sometimes it's one-sided, or sometimes you 40 made up your mind and you don't want to listen to the other side. you are only listening to people you agree with if you're a public official, and i think that doesn't work well as a representative pluralistic

democracy. [inaudible] >> there's a lot of expertise there and i think it's in the obama administration come he has backed himself into a corner, he hasn't been able to tap into the expertise because they serve as lobbyist. >> so it unintended consequence is that they are cutting off expertise. we will have speakers here. they may not tell you that would've been willing to work in the administration, not simply to advocate for who they represented, but because they know a lot about a particular topic and they want to go in and help out. that's good public servants. there is no restriction on that going into the congress. and, in fact, we had a regular speaker here, gary, who is the vice president who is going into be the staff director of the energy of the energy and commerce committee, and they do with energy and commerce

extensively, and that's okay. he knows a lot about the issues. but in the executive branch is being cut off to a certain extent. or people are not registering and they should register, just so they can be appointed. but even if you're a lobbyist before two years ago, you get somewhat tainted, i found out with some of my lobbyist friends, that even if you're a lobbyist five years ago you haven't registered for the last three or four years, the administration has not been willing even to look at those people. it's anecdotal but they are important also. john? [inaudible] >> lobbyists and advocates will come up with more creative ways to get access and influence your i've been reading the past few days about these things called letter marked and unmarked. they will just go right to

agents and bypass congress. >> tony podesta, john podesta's brother, tony podesta has his own firm, very successful firm and in the paper the other day, probably second from in terms of business volume. he was quoted as saying a couple months ago, he said look, you can pass all kinds of rules. you can take my license away, but i will find somebody to drive the car. that's your point, i think. but shouldn't we still try to have more transparency and enforcement? of existing rules, or just say let's don't restrict anything. [inaudible] >> illuminate it from the ethics

i'd. >> all departments have individuals to keep track of the time of the executives that they work for, they know exactly who they're meeting, if you run well. and members of congress, have you in your have worked in congress, maybe it had that job. .. >> of course, it would have to be passed by congress. i don't think they'd go with it, but, you know, part of the problem is within the body of congress, not with the body of lobbyists, and i think that's behind your point.

somebody had their hand up, yes. perry. >> you keep mentioning our pluralist democracy and how things work with that, and i think while president obama might be changing the way lobbyists are working now, he's not making institutional changes, he's making administration changes. >> through executive order, right. >> another two, maybe six years if he's lucky, and maybe longer than than depending on how that election goes. but i think most people are kind of waiting it out to see what ends up happening with a lot of these changes. >> executive orders can be overturned by the individual in office, by the next administration. executive orders continue into the next administration, we've got many of them, and your point is, well, maybe they're transient, people are sort of waiting it out until after 2012 to see what happens. in preparation for this presentation, i called, and be i will not name the individual, but a person in the house of representatives that has the jurisdiction over any new rules for lobbyists in ethics, and it

is not on the agenda, i was told, by the house republicans at this point. draining the swamp was with the expression in 2006. it helped the democrats. it was related to all the scandal which was primarily associated, primarily associated with republicans, and republicans, i think, do not want to visit that again. they want to move on to other kinds of procedural reforms out of the committee that has jurisdiction. right. >> do you think it's a question of revisiting or just kind of letting things go the way they've been under this administration? >> i don't think they'll have oversight hearings on this. i don't think they will push for new rules and regulations on the house side. i don't think the senate will do it either. so the task force will come out very soon. we've approved this task force report, it will call for

changing rules and making more transparent. but more importantly, enforce enforceing. we've not enforce bement really ever except through the foreign registration act and to call for more, call for the department of justice to have more resources to investigate this and to investigate people who should be lobbied, who should be lobbyists and aren't. but also we're suggesting dropping the threshold of who is a lobbyist because two contacts, 20% of your time, you can get out of that easily by being invited to see somebody. 20 % of what time, you know? that's a hard thing to calculate, and a lot of members -- a lot of people who are lobbyists saying well, you know, i don't spend 20% of my time. and so we're refining that in the report. i cannot announce it at this point. it's not up to me to do so. but, yes. sam? >> well, my name's sam, i'm from

minnesota, and i'm a little too young to be in any position of authority or knowing when jack abram off, you know, sort of ran the town -- >> he didn't run the town, by the way. he had some influence, yeah. >> but i'd be willing to met that members go to fewer basketball games, or if they do, they pay for the tickets. and a lot of sort of the perks that came along have probably been cut down pretty dramatically. >> there's been change there, right? >> in thatceps, you know, at the end of this lecture, i'll buy it, there's been some change. >> right. so there's been change in the form of gifts, gifts in the form of going to concerts, but also games. and also the trips are way, way down, and they're scrutinized by the ethics committees very carefully, and you're given permission or not to go on a flight. but, you know, the big loophole is they campaign. you can still go on a jet to go out to a campaign event paid by the campaign or political action

committee. you cannot have -- even then federal registered lobbyists cannot be on the flight, but you can do this. so lots of people in the leadership or associated with getting money for the party, campaign organizations are still using this mechanism for travel. and so there's some loopholes. but it's change in terms of everyone leaving on thursday afternoon on all these private jets out of dulles and national. yes. >> joe from new york. and while i do believe that obamas has maybe changed it a little bit, i think that this point becomes moot when considering the supreme court's ruling in citizens united. because in theory a representative or a senator could be in debt to one organization or company who can now essentially funnel millions of dollars into that campaign, and even before he's recollected

to office -- elected to office is already in debt to that company. >> so they can funnel money into organizations that can advocate for or against a federal candidate. they may not coordinate, i want to -- that's illegal. you cannot coordinate that activity with the candidate, nor with the party. that's, that's in the law. people have gotten in trouble for it, but they can still do it. and the joke is among campaign consultants, coordinate? all you have to do is watch television to see what's going on in terms of what the opposition is doing on the ads. and some of the most negative ads are coming from these organizations that are funded by anonymous sources, you know, like americans for freedom or something. i'm making up the name, i hope there's not an organization named that. and you don't know where the money's coming from. so we had the disclose act that was attempting to disclose where the money's coming from post-supreme court decision, and

it failed. in the, in the senate. passed the house, failed in the senate which would have required people to disclose where the money's coming from and list the ceos of the corporations that gave the money. and all of a sudden the ceos are saying, well, wait a minute. i don't want to be associated with my name on this particular ad. it would have been powerful. it would also limit and indicate, well, limit foreign contributions. there's a way to have foreign contributions now which is illegal, but if you run it through a u.s. subsidiary, they can run money into these ads at this point as interpreted so far. so, yeah, that particular citizens united versus fec decision really undermined 75 years of law with respect to campaign finance and makes it easier for certain interests to have an influence. and that's your thesis, right? >> it is. just like obama said maybe

messing with the pluralistic views which is kind of interesting because then be you look at the supreme court, in this theory, they're also blocking out maybe messages of the minority because, again in theory, a huge organization with lots of money can technically buy up all the commercial space. and those smaller maybe grassroots projects will not be heard. >> so the, you've heard this before, the criticism of our pluralism is the pluralist choir sings with an upper class accent. that people have more resources or more money. resources mean people, but more money have more influence than people who don't. is that right? do you agree with that, joe? >> that seems more true now, yeah. >> seems reasonable. >> >> yeah. >> right. and sometimes there's no equal competition on either side of an issue, it's all dominated by one particular interest, and we know a lot of those cases. and other times it is pretty e

call, and we have deadlock. so the conclusion is, yeah, fewer gifts, changed a little bit. i would say we have more transparency, but we still don't have the enforcement. if we had, if we had really rigorous enforcement, we'd really have a lot more transparency about what's going on. i think transparency's essential in a democracy, and i think that that was the intent of this reform. i covered some of that. but, you know, some of the unintended consequences are -- and i'm asserting this right now on deregistration -- we've had some deregistration. it's in the data i showed you, it's popped around 12,000, 14,000, back down to 12,000 federal registered lobbyists, but i think a lot of people who should register aren't. it restricts expertise as some of you have said, that's one of the consequences of this. expertise in the executive

branch in terms of the revolving door in. it, it has brought more transparency, in my opinion, but that's related to enforcement. we need more enforcement. we've talked about a bunch of loopholes. one big loophole is that when a member of congress leaves the senate, he has two years restriction from lobbying or one year. in the house frequently the day after they leave, they leave and become the head of an association. they're not a federal registered lobbyist, they have 12 federal registered lobbyists in the association and a staff of 100. they set strategy and tactics for those people. they are allowed to go to the hill, go to the floor. it is exceedingly rare when a former member goes to the floor and tries to lobby somebody. it just doesn't happen. that's enormous. they can go to the gym. you can't go to the gym or the floor if you're a registered

lobbyist, you can if you're a former member. they call somebody, and they get invited in to help draft legislation or influence certain provisions of legislation immediately after they leave. so there's a big loophole that way with senior staff and also members in the house and the senate. why am i focusing on this? because i think in your plan you need to think about what the law is and what the norms and ethics are, and we're requiring you in your report to have a code of ethics. now, a good place to go is the american league of lobbyists. there's also a code of ethics for the american association of political consultants. it's referred to in an article that i wrote in the actual, in the appendix of the article the actual codes are there. you can make up your own code. you can look at what the president has said about ethics in his executive order and be incorporate some of that.

but we want you to have that. a strong element of this class is to come out of here knowing what is legal, but also what is ethical and what the norms are. do you have any final questions or comments before we have lunch? like, where do you go to lunch or -- [laughter] okay, thank you very much. good. police departments. [applause] [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> continuing now with more from the american university public affairs and advocacy institute, in this session the legislative affairs director in the clinton white house discusses how the executive branch lobbies congress. this is an hour 15 minutes.

>> well, welcome back to the public affairs advocacy institute. my name is patrick griffiths. i'm the academic direct of this institute of this is a professional institute that is design to explore and convey insights and skills that are necessary for professional advocacy in washington, and probably applicable to many capitals around the country. this afternoon we have two speakers. i will come our first is chuck berate. chuck is a cute friend and colleague for many, many years, is an old hand in washington. has worked in many institutions your m that shape public policy one way or another. he has worked on capitol hill, part of the ways and means committee, former chairman dan rostenkowski, real poower health -- powerhouse himself.b

chuck has worked in the clintonn administration, the second tribute to tractor for the legislative affairs, a job that is extremely important inelle helping to be the president's chief lobbyist shaping his and selling them on capitol hill. he worked directly with the president, chief of staff, and the finest detail, find details of strategy development. and in slugging it out day today on capitol hill trying to make the case. he's also worked in a lobbying in part of a firm prior to two going into the white house and had his own very successful lobbying firm here in washington working principally with democrats, and beyond. a unique aspect of firms in washington but very successful, and knowing how to shape again, another cabinet into shaping policy from the outside. we are really delighted to have him back once again to talk about his experiences of

lobbying and particularly the white house and the congress, but anyway you might want to share with us. >> thank you. [applause] >> that is most famous, or im or indented to pat for having described the job that he alluded to, we shared as i was about to take, i said is this a good job. and he said it's a great rearview mirror experience. in other words, the farther away from it that you are, the better it was. and it's now about eight or 10 years, and it was a great time. i had a wonderful time in the white house. and i really did. and my topic today is the executive congressional relations, but i want to sort of

describe white house, all of that goes into devising and implementing legislative program and strategy on behalf of the white house, but also maybe suggest to you that you also need to appreciate those dynamics that goes on, that go on between the white house and the hill. as you build it into your own, you know, legislative strategy, plotting strategy on the outside, you can't operate in a vacuum. your lobbying effort, you know, just going into a black box. you have to appreciate who's getting along with you on the hill, who's cooperating with you, who's up, who's down, in

order to build your strategy from the outside. so that's in addition to just being, you know, good observant of sort of, you know, current events and good citizens. i mean, the profession that you are sort of seeking to get into, as i understand it, you also need to know what's going on up on the hill. and i've come to the conclusion after sort of 20, 20 plus years, i don't want to say exactly how long, in washington, that the congressional white house relations is really the most interesting thing that goes on because it's the most dynamic

set of relations, and, you know, most complicated and most fluid. you've all heard the analogy, playing three-dimensional chess. and the other, the other is, you know, description of something that's difficult like landing a plane on an aircraft carrier, and lobbying for the white house is trying to play three-dimensional chess while you are landing a plane the aircraft carrier during a snowstorm. it is just that difficult, but that also is what makes it a great rearview mirror experien experience. but it also makes it sort of very dynamic, and challenging.

when you do, when you walk through the gates at the white house, you know you're in the big leagues. is no other way of saying it. everything else is just sort of, you know, on the way to the big leagues. i want to start, to give you an example of how the dynamic relationship, maybe sort of pull you into the discussion, i want to start you off with a couple of hypothetical questions. you have a job, let's say you have a job at pat and i had, head of legislative affairs for the white house. the president is going to make a couple of calls to the hill to advance his legislative agenda, legislative agenda that you have been working on.

and as happened, they turn to you first, but okay, who do we call? and let's get your reaction. who would you call? [inaudible] >> the speaker? put a name on that. nancy pelosi. okay, okay so pelosi. who did you say? >> the majority and minority leaders. >> of the senate? i'm giving you two, two calls. not for. >> i guess if you are looking at, you would call nancy pelosi and harry reid. >> okay.

why would you call pelosi? >> depending on the issue, you want to see where they were on issue. >> what would you say if -- let's get another. >> the chair of whatever committee. >> potentially, but you would get, the president engages sort of at the leadership level. at that process. the chair has to be encouraged to do something, or scheduling something on the floor or something like that. usually it would be the president, not exclusively but usually deals with the leaders. who's got another?

remember, you get two calls. would your answer to the question be affected by the most recent elections? you know, come january, maybe i should specify it. you know, boehner and read would be too obvious ones. you are raising the question of how does nancy pelosi, and how does the speaker of the house, the democratic leader field because presumably this past year you were calling her, or her office first. but what about, what if i said well, mitch mcconnell? mitch mcconnell and reid, harry reid.

that sort of indicates a different dynamic, which is if you want to talk to the leaders of both houses, which is, you know, and you're willing to just say in his pass congress, you call reid and pelosi, okay, you check the boxes with the leaders of both bodies, which happens to be the leader of the party on the hill. that's a nice little symmetry. it gets complicated when your party is dominated by the leaders of the other party. so, and that's the potential switch from the one call to the house leadership, being from a republican to democrat, from pelosi to boehner. but to go at it, a there's no

right or wrong answer here. it's probably just, there are a handful of right answers, but i've given you too. but to talk about mcconnell versus boehner. mcconnell, reid. you know, you're looking at in excess, the senate, the senate versus the house. and so much of what in the past, certainly the lame duck, but much of the past congress, it's sort of whatever you get through the senate. you know, the house has to take, you know, more or less if they're going to do anything. so if you can get it through mcconnell, being the minority

leader in the house, in the senate, okay. but those are legitimate. but my point is that the answers change depending on what's going on, you know, with elections, what's going on politically, going on between the two sides. you can't look in the constitution for the right answer, or what is right, you know, december of last year it may not be right december of this year. you know, sort of another question is, or maybe a bonus question, it's a day after the election. who do you call? you've got a lame-duck session that is staring you in the face. who do you call?

the heads of two bodies, pelosi and reid. yeah, that's fine. or should you call boehner again? you know, that's another possibility. again, borges called mitch mcconnell. mitch, what will you pass? what we do that through? and i suspect that some of these conversations actually were held out the white house, you know, who are we going to bring down? who are we going to have to, you know, the real meeting. not the one that's for the public. which may not always be the

same, the same answer. anyway, this is an example of, if i work in academia -- if i were in academia, thank god i'm not, i would've written by this point in my career something called the role of twos in the american legislative process. you've got two bodies, two parties, and two branches. and whatever, you know, mathematics you can do with those things. and out of that you get almost a seemingly infinite variety, certainly a challenging set of changes where, okay, the bodies have different interests, you

know, on the hill. .. and republican say about democrats. the opposition, is here in the house. is a problem. they are my adversaries. the real enemy here in thishis process is the other body, it's the senate.d republs and republican say that about a the republican senate. democrats, this past session, said it about a democratic senate.

different reactions from, you know, the domick rats on the hill, what they think of the white house. in other words, the head of their party may or may not continue to be their leader, depending on what he perceives as his agenda. anyway, that is just a way that i am, of trying to underscore to the extent i can be effective here of the dynamic relationships going on on the hill, vis-à-vis, the white houst attuned to what is happening, you know, you might as well, i

like to say that you are painting, you are painting a picture but rather than doing it from talent and from years and years of experience you are really painting it in numbers if you don't appreciate that, you know, that changing dynamic and are sensitive to that. any questions about the current situation or the possible dynamics or the possible changes? go ahead. >> my name is sam and i'm from minnesota. i guess u.s. the hypothetical, the president got two phonecalls, who do you make? you have been in the clinton white house and seen the president really only makes two

phonecalls to capitol hill when he is on a legislative. i/o is imagined it was a little more extensive than that. >> well depending on what else is going on. you know, there may just be two. it may just be, if it is something major, sure there could be a whole lot of effort to pull together to send it into the white house run by white house affairs and where you would bring in, have cabinet members make phonecalls, you know, involved the chief chief of staff, involve the vice president, things like that. but really, you would be surprised at really how little of the presidents time or

attention you can get on a routine basis. you know, the president, it is hard for people who have spent their lives on the hill, have got other things to do. big security issues, thinking of international issues. you know, i know some people in d.c. who are asking you know, what was the president doing, thinking about going, within days of the election, to president in southeast asia and did a couple of stops over there and ended up in an economic summit. and people i have talked to on the hill are like, what are you doing going over there? we just lost an election. well, the fact of the matter is, he had an economic summit to go to that had been scheduled for a couple of years and has a role

of, to the outside world. so, it may just be two calls, depending on what else is going on. go ahead, right there. >> can you shed some light on your thoughts of the current tax deal that obama and the seedier majority cut, maybe some background thoughts on how it happened and how it went down, etc.? >> it is probably the most recent example of the dynamic relationship and changing power structure that exists. by and large, if i were a democratic member of congress i would probably have voted for it. but, to think that any democrat

on the hill plays a significant role in its development i think is dubious. you know, didn't do it, but i think that was probably -- you know, some of us had questions like, okay, and speculated for months about where's the president going to play the game? where in the spectrum is he going to go as a result of what was proved out to be, in his words, a shellacking. seeing that this shellacking was coming, and there was speculation, will he triangulate, which is a bad term, coming from the clinton administration. to me, triangulation means

simply working with the people who share your views and your goals. regardless of party. or that some people said no, he won't do that. he will go hard left, and sort of, you know, the left needs to be appeased. they are disappointed for a whole variety of reasons. and while i am sure the white house is flexible enough to do different strategies on different issues, it is an example of okay, he wanted to get something done, which is another imperative of any white house and therefore -- they are

there for four years. the most you can be guaranteed his four years and you get renewed once, but you you are guaranteed another four years, and so there is an imperative to get things done. whereas congress, there is always going to be another congress and up until, you know, the massive defeats. you can plan on being around for a while. i think that assumption is now questionable, about how secure any seed is, but that is, i mean, the difference between the white house and congress. and so, within i think a couple of days, as i read the

newspapers correctly, the president has decided, okay i need to get a deal here. we need for whatever reason to clear the deck of some issues, including some of the other sort of business that he wanted to get done, and i'm referring to the s.t.a.r.t. treaty which normally he wouldn't think of as a legislative issue, so you need to get through the end of this year. i think of people on the hill, the democrats, might have urged him not to cut that tax deal. lets just sort of go into next year. maybe there are some republicans who didn't like the compromise either. certainly, there was a 100% vote on either side of the aisle, so i am sure the republican leadership was also criticized

in private caucuses for compromising with the president rather than waiting until january 5, when we can do it our way. the house will send the senate sort of, given the dynamics of the rules committee and the majority nature of the house of representatives, send them sort of the -- the estate tax is an example. send them complete repeal or permanent increase in the bush tax cuts. let's wait until january to do that and then we will fight it out over in the senate and we will jam the president, but a constellation of interests came together. he wanted to get something done, and on the hill, to my surprise they wanted to get something done too virchow socom i mean is that a, is that a sign of things

to calm? we will see. it also then gets to and more questions here, the agenda setting function of the white house and we talked a little bit here and a second about the role president in setting the agenda and the legislative process, but the state of the union isn't typically until the third or fourth week in september, i mean in january. the house of representatives is coming in and staying in, in january. so what is the house going to be doing with the new republican

majority, the first three weeks in january? they are going to be setting their own agenda, so we will see what happens in the future. but, it is a further example of, you know, the dynamism of the relationship. amalie. >> i was wondering, you mentioned that the elections would have an impact on the context of the president and the highest level of leadership. [inaudible]

>> yeah. that is typically outside of the legislatures purview and gets to other offices that are part of the white house team. you know, public affairs process that supports the president. there is an intergovernmental affairs office, which works with the, the mayors and governors, and they be the president in some circumstances will call a governor. asked the governor to lobby his or her members of congress. so yeah, there is a whole lot -- i don't think i would advise them to call the owner of the philadelphia eagles and talk

about michael vick. but, there is a whole sort of set relationships that go beyond the narrow lane of white house affairs, but as part of a team, you hope that okay, it is all coming together and so folks on the outside are involved in that sort of, focused in on that goal. john. >> i have a similar question. is very probable scenario in the new congress and what kind of speaker john is going to be where the white house would almost marginalize him if he is not in control of these factions in the house with a tea party people, the incoming folks?

and what they have to make those phonecalls, they may not call john and they might go to i don't know, can't tour or somebody else. boorish the speaker always going to be --. >> not always, but when you have got, i don't know, publicly reported to be rivals i am sure they would say they were each other's best friends and democrats have the same set of personalities at the top. to call the inferior one, that being the lesser, to call the assistant and not the leader, you are playing with fire there.

so, you had better have a real good reason for calling, calling one and not the other. >> if the speaker calls the white house -- [inaudible] >> not typically. i mean, in theory, every communication with the hill goes through legislative affairs so every meeting is set up the legislative affairs. meetings are one thing to control. every phonecall going out should involve legislative affairs. phonecalls coming in, well, you

know, that is less stringent. phonecalls, president clinton used to call people on the hill at 1:00 in the morning. i know their wives didn't like the phone ringing. i certainly wouldn't want my phone to ring to get a report on what the president said. especially i mean, this white house, you are dealing with two former legislators and two former senators. to try to monitor joe biden's calls, good luck. and you know, my reaction, when i was on the hill, head of legislative affairs, if any significant person wanted to talk to the president, go ahead, let them.

one time i happen to be traveling with the president to boston, my hometown, you know, and we met at the airport by senator kennedy, who drove with us in the presidential limo to the event and so just the three of us in the backseat of the lemieux and when we got to the place, i got out and it was clear that senator kennedy wanted to have a conversation with the president. my thought was, you know if senator kennedy wants to have a private conversation with the president of the united states, i am not going to get in the way. and so i just sort of stood outside. that is also ask i went into the event and realized it was a winter much like today.

i realized i only had one of my gloves and i went back and they are the president was holding up a glove. and he looked at me and he says, is this your glove? yes, mr. president, thank you for doing it. anything else? >> i was wondering if --. >> i am having fun and i enjoy your questions, and i'm sure you learned from my answers to your questions. >> i was wondering if you have made any major changes to a lot of legislation? >> i think his legislative agenda was by and large thrust on him by events, first of all by economic events, which i don't think he is given credit

enough for and i am editorializing here but two years ago at this time in december, december of 08, the white house transition team was actually up and running as a functioning government, and the president had to deal with an economic crisis while he was in transition and the first several months were in part getting president wishes proposals through the congress. so that is part of the -- things

that happen that you have to deal with. and the banking bill, largely, had to do it. i think the one that is you know judged, second-guessed at this point is health care reform. should they have done health care reform? but i think people, you know, fully appreciate what public opinion was back then. both during the campaign and then early on. health care reform was a huge priority and taking that on first, you know, i don't quibble with that at all. you have to realize that, specially in the white house

legislative affairs, that everyone is going to second guess you. if they hadn't done any of those things, you know, they would be second-guessed by the same people that second-guessed them for having done it, so -- i don't have any quibble with it. i think the big question is, and i alluded to it, what is the agenda going to be for this year and you have got the state of the union out there, and again the date probably has been set but the third week in january is a good guess. the budget, they announced it is going to be delayed but it will

probably be mid-february and another major event is the expiration of the debt ceiling, which for those of you who don't know, there is a dollar amount that is set in law that the united states can't borrow more than that amount. now, it is not a date and time but it is an amount, so when we hit the debt limit, it is a matter or a projection. it is right now projected to be sort of early spring, march, april timeframe. and i mean, that is what the republicans back in 95, shut the government down over.

and it resulted in, i mean a constitutional crisis, major confrontation, you know, and history being made as a result of that. what are we going to see? where are the republicans going to want for an increase in the debt limit? you would be surprised. a balanced budget package or a significant deficit reduction package. along the lines of what erskine bowles and senator alan simpson just came up with. other than that, i don't know what the white house has on its agenda. they seem to have gotten a lot of it. what they didn't get in the last two years they got in the

lame-duck, and there were policy options in the white house who were busy churning out other things. tax reform could be one of them. a freestanding tax reform bill, but on the other hand, the democratic congress was receptive to the president's agenda. i mean especially the house of representatives has the ability to sort of move. one thing you could maybe fault the administration for was moving on climate change or energy legislation, but nancy pelosi sure got that through the house to the consternation of some people who aren't going to be a member of the next

congress. does that come back in some form but then you have to sort of say, what is the republican agenda in the house? the gavel is going to pass from, i mean it is very symbolically passed from nancy pelosi to john boehner. it was the other way around four years ago, but while that is just symbolic and a piece of wood, i mean an awful lot of it goes without. most importantly, setting the agenda, dropping the gavel in literally dozens of committee rooms and asking people, witnesses to raise your right hand. we are not going to talk to you about, and the republicans in the house will fill in the

blanks. the democrats get one witness, whereas it is entirely differen. alright, i always liked going back to the constitution itself. we talk about white house and congressional legislative affairs, congressional relations, and ask what the constitution says about the role of the president in the legislative process. can anyone tell me sort of like how many times or what sorts of

powers that the president, how many times he is mentioned or the powers the president has? emily. [inaudible] >> and than that actually sort of is in article i of the constitution, which defines the legislative branch, so it is even part of the legislative branch, you know, which starts off saying all legislative powers being in the hands of the legislature that consists of the house and senate. so and there they describe a pocket veto situation. there is another one, however. >> there is advising and reporting of the state of the union. >> yes. in article ii, which deals with

the executive branch, it says the president shall from time to time give to congress information of the state of the union and recommend, meaning congress', consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient. i mean, other than in that same section sort of some relatively archaic language about it can convening or returning congress under "extraordinary occasions"really the president can, the constitution gives him the power to decide whether or not to veto a bill and how to veto it and, you know, to send

up his views on the state of the union, you know, what else you think is going on. such measures that are deemed to be expedient and out of those two sections, we now have a situation where i don't think there is any doubt that everyone would agree, or most observers would say, that in the legislative process the president is the preeminent power. he sets the agenda. he drives the process. very little -- very a little originates on the hill on its own and that was always the case

throughout history. but it certainly is today, and while we can debate why, how, really, since the past 70 or 80 years, you know, how the president has become the preeminent power in the legislative process since the eisenhower administration. there there is has been this office of legislative affairs where the executive branch has focused its legislative efforts through this white house of legislative affairs that padded i had the privilege of having. it goes back to, the story goes, the eisenhower ministries and where president eisenhower, who of course had spent some time

over in the pentagon in the military, to put it mildly, he got to the white house in 1953 and said where is my legislative affairs officer? what are you talking about? well, you know, who is the person responsible for implementing, you know, working with me on congressional affairs we don't know what you are talking about. over at the pentagon. we have an officer in charge of everything, and there is somebody over there who does, you know, congressional relations. oh, yeah, that is new. we can set up that office and ss sort of diffused throughout the

government, but beginning sometime in the early 50s the white house legislative affairs office was set up and one of the early incompetence of the office called it -- his job was to build bridges across the yawning constitutional chasm, being the executive branch and the legislative ranch. he also said it was his job to unchecked the checks and unbalanced the balances. it is a pretty apt description are certainly poetic. a person who had the job in between patrick and myself said his job, he realized at any point this is less poetic and

less flowery language. he said at any point in time he realized that somebody in the government was doing something completely stupid that was bound to take somebody off on the hill big-time and it was his job to go fix it. but that is probably more accurate description, more contemporary than bryce harlow in her early incumbent but to unchecked the checks and unbalanced the balance. but having said the president is the preeminent legislative actos on white house, it is all done through white house legislative affairs. there is no office on the hill that is part of the white house.

white house legislative affairs usually doesn't have a place on the hill to call its own. frequently people hang out. it sounds mundane but it is a practical matter, where are you going to go to leave your papers? where are you going to go to, you know, use the computer? where are you going to go to meet somebody? the vice president does have an office in the capital. he has got staff that uses that office but frequently -- [laughter] i knew it was hot in here. but that is the only piece of property on the hill that the white house has regular access to and then only with the

permission of the vice president and his staff. it is true that this white house legislative office did have access in the house to a room that the speaker was kind enough to provide, but that is when the speaker controlled all of, mrs. pelosi, controlled all of the real estate and she shrinks her staff, shrinks her real estate, all of that is controlled by boehner. you know, mimicking a situation that i faced, we faced much of the time, i mean after 94 in the white house, we had this office

space in the house that was the end of the hallway outside of the -- office. that was it. think of it, just sort of like this major lobbying effort and machine and responsibility, and people, where are you going to put the secretary of state when he is up for a meeting or he or she is up for a meeting? where are you going to conduct your own meanings? you don't control any office space on the hill. it really is a different branch. but the office of legislative affairs really never, never changes much. the structure, since eisenhower,

it has grown but from one administration to the next, the structure, it doesn't change. it has been tried. you come in and you are moving so quickly with the transition, you are like okay, this is what my predecessor did regardless of party. let's just do it the same way. so it is headed by an assistant to the president for legislative affairs, one person. below that there are three deputies, one deputy who is in charge of the house, one in charge of the senate obviously and one doing the internal paperwork. he is called an inside deputy,

to make sure paperwork has been signed. below that, roughly half a dozen, both the house and senate and special assistance to the president whose job is to go to the hill, divide up a certain number of members and committees and issues, slice it whichever way, may be several ways so you have somebody in charge of the commerce committee, somebody in charge of low ways and means in the house and the finance committee and the senate. below that person -- below those, you have -- excuse me. a number of staff assistants.

though there people are like to say really do much of the work at the white house. people just out of school looking around. some of you people are probably older than the staff assistants in the white house. people who do the inches. people who coordinate events. every event that occurs is going to have a congressional component. white house affairs will be involved and to make sure senator glenn is treated properly. i use senator glenn as an example not because i am showing

my age but because one night late afternoon, thinking back to the clinton administration there was going to be a medal of honor ceremony to a couple of korean soldiers who for whatever reason hadn't received the medal of honor that they were awarded back in the 50s. the mistake was realized and one who was going to get a posthumous award and two others were there in the late '60s and early 70s. so that was going to go on. we didn't know anything about it until we got a call from senator glenn who has you recall was a

decorated veteran of world war ii, korean war, famous to my generation has the first man to orbit the earth. so i am down in the white house at a meeting andy roddick call from my office saying senator glenn had just called the white house social office, the people doing this event and he was told there was no for senator glenn at the event. it was full and he couldn't come down. that is the wrong answer to tell basing united states senator. much less john glenn because he was a marine. a couple of these gentlemen were

marines. white house switchboard has senator glenn on the phone and we're going to put him through to you. okay. senator glenn. what can i do for you? he said chuck, i am with my wife annie. we got some of the grandchildren here. we are in the van driving around town on the way to the white house and they tell me i can't come to the award ceremony. i said i don't know how that ever happen. just -- fine. we will take care of you. and i understood the importance of senator glenn not only as a an individual but to the president's legislative program. quite frankly he was a vote.

so i said come right down. i will meet you at the front door of the white house. then i went in and saw the person who told them know and i said this is a problem. i told him to come down. you can't do that. tell him to go back. just turnaround. there is no room for him. does it find the person the will have senator glenn's standing here in five minutes. the president will come by and he will say why don't you come on in and you are going to be the one who says to the president he can't go in. find room for him, whatever. that is a little bit of the sensitivity. there are other support offices in the white house.

describing this as, quote, support office. but you all have particular sensitivities. and responsibilities. mine is congress. so i am responsive to whatever members of congress want to do. you are also supported in legislative affairs by other assistants to the president who were in charge of policy development, national economic council, democratic policy cal, council of economic advisers, national security council,

national security adviser, believe it or not has the same rank within the white house as pat or i did. we also have institution relations. cabinet affairs. someone has to get on the phone every morning with the chiefs of staff to the cabinet. cabinet members saying this is what the white house is doing today. we are advancing this proposal. this is the president's schedule. and as i said or made reference to earlier, the governors and mayors etc. state legislators and then also sort of a vast communications shot which has grown beyond the white house

press secretary to types of media that have or are done to understand but i am sure somebody in the white house is in charge of facebook or twitter. it is all overseen by the chief of staff. but the power of legislators, effectiveness is built on persuasion. you have to be able to persuade people on the hill to do what you want them to do, get them to do what you want them to do, you have to persuade them it is in their best interest to do with you want to. you can do that on the basis of party loyalty. that works. with members of your own party. you can get 90% of your own

party just by saying -- putting a proposal up there. you will also nighty. this lose 90% of the other party by getting a proposal out there. just like the supreme court nominees. we have seen how this game is played. judge scalia set on the bench for ten years approved unanimously. they toledo and what can defend of her name? elena kagan. colleaguey can defend of her name? elena kagan. colleague at the white house.

the emphasis is on the middle. keeping those in your party that you can get but persuading someone on the other side that they should support you too. the results also refer to what is kind of leader is john boehner going to be or mitch mcconnell? will they see it is in their interest to cooperate with the president and get something done? in which case why not -- it will be wildly successful, of villified by some of their biggest friends on the democratic side. as you develop your legislative strategy, be aware of and being

able to tap in to the changing dynamics between the house and the senate and congress and the white house is important. so with that i will be -- kind of to ask your question i will clear my throat. >> the point you were making and unanswered questions. do you think the republicans benefited by their cooperation with a president in the lame-duck? they clearly had a strategy of just say no. they got rewarded in the election for that in a dramatic way and then somehow decided to cooperate on a lot of things. do you think they are benefiting

from that but what might we take from that going forward? >> that level of cooperation is something i didn't predict. i was saying nothing will come out of the lame-duck besides -- the only decision they will make is the length of the continuing resolution. i was surprised by that. why not wait until january? we can do it right. have a longer if not permanent level of cuts, higher at a state tax exemptions and things like that. it is too soon to see if they're rewarded or not. the ultimate reward will come november.

two years from now. but it does underscore that there are as you know problems, political and social scientists talk about the great movement of history and trends and things like that. some of the most important things come down to individual decisions made by discreet actors. john boehner and mitch mcconnell, barack obama all made the decision that it was better to cooperate and get it done. the prognosticator is looking at it from almost a disinterested and involved perspective, nothing is going to happen here

so we will see. most of my time on the hill with in an era inside the government. it was a clear majority in the house that we thought was never going to end. years 30 through 40 let's say. but the white house -- i never thought i would see another democratic president after jimmy carter. so i am sort of a fan of cote government. things get done. you made reference to the biggest thing that gets mentioned in the -- his obituary this past august was tax reform. 25 years ago.

but it was a republican with ronald reagan's proposal that will work toward the republican white house republican senate to accomplish. >> in their self-interest to do it. >> yes. >> was there ever a time when you were lobbying the senate or democrats to hold something up so that president clinton wouldn't have to veto it? have vetos ever come back to haunt him? >> it was more probably a case of being flexible about what we thought was vetoable to the level of objectionability to the

veto level. in eight years of the clinton administration there was one veto that was successfully overridden. that is in part testimony to how affective plight house legislators were in the administration and also another thing about we were reflective in what we tried to veto on. i think what you remind me of what you want to advance your agenda so you have a signing ceremony with your priorities you also want to make sure other things you object to, may be the leader of stage is the last

stage. maybe you don't even have a hearing on some bills. if it picked up steam, that you would have to object to. >> one last question, john? [inaudible] >> we did. on some relatively big issues. not on a day-to-day basis. just wasn't the time to meet with outside folks. but on major initiatives, especially on trade type issues, those clearly an alignment, some trade expansions, we would meet

with the business community. it is illegal to be in the federal government and urge somebody to go to the hill and lobby. but short of that, someone to lobby on behalf of the administration proposal you could tell them given the status report, tell them who you are working with and let them know. frequently on our own initiative and public affairs, get pulled into a meeting to talk to not just private individuals or on behalf of either labor unions or business interests, other governments. i can think of south american ambassadors who come in to have

a meeting and be brought in as part of the program. i remember meeting with ministers who were part of a legislative strategy that we had. i sat in the roosevelt room with ministers. it is part of the affect of lobbying. and go out on the lam and i don't see this white house doing much of that as they could. they probably hinder their own effectiveness in that regard by not doing that should it be correct. the other thing is not having -- by definition never lobbied

before. i questioned the wisdom of that. i understand all sorts of employment restrictions. but preemployment restrictions, i question, like hiring baseball player to play basketball. you could do that if you are a millionaire and a. >> thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

>> in this next section, academic director patrick griffin talks about crafting a strategic message in lobbying campaigns. this is an hour and 20 minutes. >> are we ready? are we ready? welcome back. this is the public affairs and advocacy institute. i am patrick griffin, academic director of the institute. we focus on professional institute focusing on skill and understanding associated with lobbying and advocacy in washington d.c.. this is our last session of the afternoon.

what we are going to talk about today is strategic messageing. we will try to answer three questions in the general sense. what is it? why do you need it and how do you develop it? let me ask anyone who would venture a guess, what do you think strategic messageing is? what is your general sense of there right now? >> the right information in a receptive format for people who need to know? >> can anybody embellish upon that? >> delivering a message received by the people you are trying to -- >> it is the right information. now it is making sure if you see -- what are those things that would in short it would be received well?

>> the right audience. >> what would that mean in terms of your message? >> the background like lifestyle. [inaudible] >> know who you are talking to so that the message makes sense. what else? taylor to your audience. this is the strategic message. [inaudible] >> the right medium. what do you mean by that? >> for some things you want to have advertising campaign and other things for grassroots network tools. >> so basically the technology that you use to convey the message. does that capture what you were

saying? what other piece? all of this is spot on. what are we missing here? [inaudible] >> the messenger. the messenger. so we have adding the knowledge, knowing the audience, understanding the medium and having the right messenger deliver that. we will come back to that. why do you think -- of all the tools that we have available to us in advocacy, where would you put this? we have direct lobbying and the use of the internet and paid media and earned media and grassroots crest top coalition

and all these tools, arrows in the quiver of an advocate or a lobby. where do you think if you were ranking them where you would put strategic messageing? >> it frames everything you do. every time you talk to coalition members or paid ordering, those lines are things you want to convey have to be there. >> is there anything more important than messageing? in my judgment, in my experience weather it was lobbying for the president or the ceo or majority leader in the senate the only thing that was more important is understanding why you are doing what you are doing. what is your strategy? what is it grounded in? a message without a strategy and a game plan will be poetic and touching but it doesn't matter. beyond that i don't think there

is a tool, lobbyists or advocates than effective messageing. strategic messageing. you can do direct lobbying and have a message, you can do strategic messagesing without doing direct lobbying. you need it almost as an essential component once you have a vision and goal and game plan. you don't walk on tv or speak to a group and say nothing. first among equals in terms of

advocacy tools. we need to speak to the audience. what does that mean? how many audiences would you have? >> editorial awards. >> give me a couple, in your advocacy plant. why does a constituent, why would i care about talking about this? >> the issue that the

constituency -- to their geographic area. and they will be upset if she votes the wrong way. >> you might want to get them interested and active. what might we be thinking about in context of the campaigns you are working on or just generally. what other audiences like a campaign manager and his or her team might be saying let's go through the list. who do we need to be talking to basically? who else might that be? >> the constituents.

the editorial board and the press. what is the difference? the ones that earn peace and -- >> to help you -- [inaudible] >> to validate your issue. what else? other policymakers. >> you have to convince them to

be beneficial. >> depending on how your firm operates, save your moaning to somebody else. building your lobbying activity, not a small matter particularly if your coalition gets bigger and bigger, keep people motivated in terms of staying active or going to the hill or whatever. your messageing is an important part that is more nuanced. any others? >> local public officials.

[talking over each other] >> staffers of lawmakers. >> very important distinction. you are talking to staffers with the same relationship to the decisionmaker and other world view. they're not the same responsibility. and understand it may be different, that may be another way of crossing out your audience. these are the people you would want to potentially talk to and the critical audiences as it relates to a specific campaign or the ones you are working on whatever and many audiences are involved in every campaign. you are rarely talking to just the one person. find a way to talk to all those

people in some consistent coherent way but also touching them in a way that matters. what else might you be talking about other than what you are advancing? strategic message? so we are talking strategic messageing has to do with competency, conveying with competency and understanding of the particular issue. [inaudible] >> close. anybody else can elaborate on that? >> one thing that might be more important than the issue you are going for is a way of looking at the issue that comes along with it. don't ask don't tell is a civil rights issue as opposed to a military -- >> you are on to something and we will get into exactly that

when we developed that message. what are the pieces, wraparound of that. in terms of content use started down a truthful path here. one is you are talking about your issue. you want to find ways to convey that and have the right messenger and make sure you are talking to all the people you need to talk to. we need to talk about our position. ideally we would want to have some opportunity to convey our opposition but if we will get into this in more detail. you want to talk about what you are doing at least being mindful of what your opposition is going to be saying and possibly defining your opposition. words matter.

one of the most clever rephrasing of, one that was very topical in the last few months was about a tax issue. does anyone know what tax issue i might be referring to? what is the framing -- frank luntz, a competent communications public affairs, all around talented guy, academic at american university. he is given credit for talking about taking the estate tax. does everybody know what that is? there is a certain limit if your parents die and they leave it to you will be exempted from a pretty hefty tax. that limit has done -- there was no limit on it for a couple years.

it would have gone back to a million dollars and this deal president obama -- take up to $5 million. that debate has been going on as long as i was back in the senate. it used to be whether or not we tax estates that are passed from one family to another. it is a rational way to talk about that. if you have a huge estate why wouldn't the government get a piece of that when it passes down? frank luntz refrained that debate. instead of making it a b 9 conveying of the state he calls it a death tax. it conveyed all sorts of imagery in a way that has been

very successful for that particular campaign that has gone on almost 20 years to the point that we are now having dramatic modifications as evidenced by the last report. we will talk more about that in a second. what about messengers? what do we mean by messengers really? you are running a campaign, right? we are going to pass the rockefeller bill to limit the impact of the epa regulations or we are going to defeat it. what does that mean? we will have messengers with whatever our strategic message is. you are going to hire somebody to be a messenger. [inaudible] >> so what kind of messenger is the face of a local constituent?

what other kind of messengers might we be thinking about as we mall around this business of creating a strategic message? >> sponsors of the bill and house and senate encouraging it. >> that is another message. the actual person, you are evaluating whether or not that senator or congresswoman or congressman you have no choice but they will be a messenger of some sort. who else? >> for people who are on an issue greatly. >> an interest group message? what do you mean? you tell me. >> interest to the same coalition. we want you to dish out your members or hold a press conference to try to have other

aspect on this. >> and they become the messenger representing that. you put the seal of approval. the club is for what you did. it is against what you did and they become a messenger of sorts. different from a voice. we don't necessarily mean a voice. what other messages might we have? >> celebrity spokesperson. >> that is kind of fun. it is amazing. i have worked in the music industry for long time years ago and we had very arcane issues happen to copyright and payment. you put a singer/songwriter someone new in all of a sudden really focusing attention. it is used quite often in a work of but one campaign.

bono has been an enormous impact as a messenger and has been able to encourage other celebrities peepers the many organizations rely on that as a messenger. but a messenger without a strategic message is not a lot of fun even in a photo op but not tied in to the game plan is only but a photo op. any others? >> maybe use an event or milestone. >> yes. it is a way of conveying your point of view. either a voice or symbol or an event or organization. really what we are talking about here in strategic messageing is you are going to be launching a $10 million campaign hypothetically or as i have done in the past on other lobbying

activities when i was in the lobbying business. the person -- whether your client or your ceo or the president of your non profit is saying we have a lot of parts and a lot of money moving around. that needs to be held perry carefully with a strategic message. we don't really want to move out there until we know how to talk about what we're going to do. it is one of the first things you do. before you knock on the first bourse and the first e-mail or the first set of talking points we really need to know how to talk about what we are trying to accomplish. it is essential. in that exercise you begin just like we did. what are we really trying to accomplish?

what is the idea? here is the idea. i am not sure that is the best way to say it to congressman so and so. will the press respond to that? whoever the audiences are someone says who are the audience? an individual or consulting case and bring to your efforts but it is one of the most sensitive and important and crucial and first and foremost exercises of all of advocacy so you create this stew of ideas, messengers, ways of conveying technology venues and just start mixing that all up. that is the beginning of the

process of strategic messaging. there is a more rational way to go through it. but it really is a major exercise with a certain amount of complexity and moving parts. why is it so non important? what do you think? why do you think it is important? to go through this exercise that i am creating that an advocacy team goes through before they pull the first trigger on anything. >> to control the narrative and usually more often than not wind up on debate. >> you say is essential to frame

the opening conversation about your- >> the people thinking about it can't think about it clearly. or influence the thinking that doesn't matter you need to give them a message over and over again. >> so it is critical to getting somebody's attention. >> to create a narrative and stuff. what you are thinking about is so clear and so repeated that they have their ideas themselves. >> there are a lot of things we want to accomplish with messageing. they are not all the same and we will get into that. some of persuasion and moving

people to action and different degrees of action. what research has shown and mainly we have gotten this out of the private sector, being able to communicate to people, weather you want to get them to buy a box of oatmeal or vote for so and so, you have to find a way to break through. whether you are trying to break through to congressman so and so's life who is probably pretty chaotic and pretty demanding and hectic and moving around all the time or you are trying to get down to a constituency level and get people to write a letter or say they will vote for somebody yes or no because of a particular issue or you are just trying to get some attention in the press through earned media

activity, the challenge we all have in running an advocacy campaign or selling a box of oatmeal is breaking through. what the research has shown us is a carefully thought out strategic messageing strategy will have a better likely chance of succeeding if it is done as part of a rational and tested exercise than saying how do we sell this? i like oatmeal because it is hot or i don't know why quaker oats has that got with the had. some early research must have suggested that with a good idea but i don't know if they have tested it lately. nevertheless we have found a way -- there is research that suggests if you have a brand that people are accepting that

has validity and reliability, no reason to change it for the sake of changing it. but if there was research or whatever it is, quaker oats that suggested it was time to freshen that diet and give him a new hat you wouldguy up and give him a hat you would know they have it. breaking through is the key piece. having a lot of activity and resources and you are not breaking through, you are not connecting is going to be not only a frustrating and demoralizing experience, you will spend a lot of money on other activities that are losing their value because they are not being carried or wrapped around in a strategic messageing

strategy. breaking through -- >> there will be other -- [inaudible] -- is there a goal of not having a message or having a message and making sure no one knows about it? you want something done without anybody knowing about it, you don't want to read about it in the paper. >> the jig is up. that is an interesting perspective. there was a time in washington and we talk a little bit about this the other day when there was a notion that you could sneak something in in the dead of night. that you could whisper in so and so's year and you are going to make it all the way around and have a successful legislative accomplishment. in those days, in those situations there was that approach.

those days and those approaches are far behind us. i think the pressure for more transparency, weather it is on earmarks for line item appropriation or anything, it is so great that your issue has to withstand the light of day. i think transparency is one of the most important antiseptics we have for most corruption. it doesn't eliminate corruption. there are still things that can go wrong with that but if you give people the chance to see what you are doing and people can make an evaluation on that we are taking a step forward. in that context having the best way to characterize what you are trying to accomplish that to your ability -- the possibility of you being more successful. [inaudible]

>> one of the administrations or something like that. and there is probably some firm -- you might want to appear that that kind of thing took a personal liking to the issue. how your firm called the congressman. is that in line? >> are you making a statement or asking a question? >> john had asked that. there may still be things you don't want in public despite the transparency. >> you are absolutely right but that is not a messaging strategy. that goes to the underlying strategic effort in first place. and you design a messaging

strategy for that goal. sometimes you see where it will get bigger or more complicated and i don't want to risk it and there are others where it makes sense you only do what is important to that activity and you are not seeking that and sometimes some people are seeking to put light on your issue because that is part of my strategic message. this is not in the public eye yet. but you are not imagining i am trying to do that as you develop your low-key messageing strategy, whoever sees it sees it but if you know that you are trying to get something done that you are the winner and i might be to lose a you better be thinking about what i might do to you weather you wanted to be done or not.

it is almost inescapable. unless you are asking for something that has no impact on anybody else it is really rare where you want something where there isn't a winner or loser so you need to think about what makes most sense generally as it relates to messageing from your objective but at some point the strategic message exercise you better be thinking about who is losing and if they do it and are successful you better have a game plan to anticipate that. it has to be in proportion to your underlying objective. transparency is a different issue. i was speaking broadly as an important one to the legislative process and political process. the more transparency we all benefit and the system is generally moving in that direction. it is not the reason to have a strategic message but it is

certainly a good idea given -- not the only reason but given that it is happening you had better be prepared to deal in that world. the notion of nobody is going to talk about this is not a rational strategy as a general matter. what jim said his whatever you are writing will wind up on your mother's front page or the washington post. there are a lot of reasons to be thinking about having a compelling rational way of talking about what you are trying to do. why do you think this might be such a challenging exercise? why should it be that hard? >> maybe it is not that hard. >> it is hard.

i made a stupid mistake -- not alone fortunately but 15 years ago i had a client, the man i worked for was one of the most remarkable men -- nobel prize winner wounded in vietnam. a fighter to the end. he was fighting to eradicate land mines and have the u.s. not use landmines. and worked with folks internationally at his insistence to have country after country but couldn't get the united states in so i tried to help him build a legislative strategy to put pressure on president clinton to beside this land mine treaty but that is a whole story in itself but one of the most interesting aspect of it is part of our messageing,

based on our audience, to pentagon, the press, senators in congress and men and women in capitol hill, we had a bill that had over 60 senators, democrats and republicans and 250 or more members in the house by party. we had someone give us some money we were going to put an ad on in d.c. and we thought we had a great idea. the ad was six or seven senators in the senate. from chuck robb to bob kerrey and a bunch of them and they were all willing to do an ad and say we don't need those devices any more. that is not the margin that is a remnant of vietnam.

we had the hottest thing going. one thing i remember talking to body about that i would like to take credit for having the idea, we probably should test this before we drop this money on this. how could this be wrong? you have bipartisan, all the school senators ready to go. one senator had lost three limbs. pretty compelling picture. we did research, a couple focus groups on it. and ziad totally bombed. are you kidding me? these guys are politicians. we looked at that ad and saw something entirely different. those folks saw nothing but politicians promoting an issue that some of served them.

we did another focus group. we finally believe that, changed the ad and put bobby muller and faced the camera. he is incredibly charismatic and compelling. we never got the administration to sign on to the treaty but we moved the debate along and i don't know how many countries signed on to this. that could have been of multibillion-dollar disaster and i would have bet the house that that ad would have resonated. we talked ourselves into and quickly got out of it. why do you think that is hard? what did we miss in that? >> in the end in washington --

>> we had an audience, trying to do inside the beltway, we were going to run it around. tim russert at that time and all the morning talk shows, that was our play. what did we miss? >> the audience, you thought you did. >> what didn't know about it? >> how they interpreted politicians and some of them were kind of crooked. >> but you would think everyone in washington would have gotten that, right? we are all living off of the fact of the land here. we missed something. there was a valued disconnect

that i think if those guys were sitting in our room individually we might have convinced them that this was perfect but when it came across in terms of an ad it was clearly cheesy. >> people losing limbs. >> no. but we thought we had a slick bunch of senators and they were. this was impressive. this was in the late 90s. that would make the case. whatever it was weakness that. the value connection with our targeted audience by a mile. one of the things going to my question is what makes it hard is particularly when you are crossing out different audiences, we talked about