great other place in the sky and that's what i hope people take from it. were all in this together. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> this is book tv and c-span2. one prime time during the august congressional recess. sure knew some of the stops tonight we have made on our city's tour around the nation.

>> the name of the book is the ethical lobbyist, reforming washington's influence industry. when you read what others have written about the lobbying profession from an ethical point of view, a lot of it is about that, all forms of lobbying are unethical. lobbying essentially out to be banned. that may be lobbyist should spend more time to represent marginalize disadvantaged populations or they should provide some kind of pro bono advocacy work in this way that lawyers provide pro bono advocacy work. i sort of felt that misses the point. which goes to the question, what is lobbying supposed to be? of lobbying is going to be justified at all, if it's going to be worthy of some kind of protection that we need to figure out basically on what grounds is lobbying protected

and representative of government. lobbying in our system is really only protected under the first amendment's petitioning clause. the first amendment arguably the most famous of the bill of rights contains a lot of stuff, probably not too many people think about the very last part of the first amendment which is the right of the people to petition government. most people think of freedom of speech, freedom of religion freedom of the press petitioning is a very old right that comes out of the english common law. as the rights of the people to insist that their government respond to their problem. we have a complicated system of government. that just at the national level but state governments have become complicated even local governments. it's hard to understand how it

gets done. so how a group of people there going to be better off if they employ a professional petitioning . that ability is. that's where lobbyist goes. they advocate on behalf of the people. if they're organized into an interest group or whether corporation that there lobbying on behalf of. that's what a lobbyist is supposed to do. they're supposed to advocate on someone else's behalf. that is only legal justification if they could be protective legally. it is lobbying on behalf of other people where the lobbyist is lobbying exactly for what his or her employer wants. so that's the basic motivation.

now, the next question that arises is, okay, why would the lobbyist to anything else. why would they ever not lobby for exactly what his or her employer's what? there's actually good explanation. a lobbyist is viable on the market. not so much that the relationship that he or she has built a powerful lawmaker. lobbyist cannot is members of congress, senior people can do that. they have to have access to these people so is defined by

the quality of the people they have access to. the senate majority leader paul ryan, a lot of on our at washington d.c. so to have a long lucrative career they have to have good relationships with powerful people said they would value those relationships potentially over the quality of the representation of the people that employ them. in other words, it would be easier for a lobbyist to find another client, another interest group to represent then it would be for the lobbyist to try to re- bill of the speaker of the house of something has gone wrong with that relationship.

now, elected officials and senior officials in the bureaucracy just in the lawmaking system tend to need to put together large coalition. we have a majority rule system for making laws in the united states. to have to bring a bunch of people together about different ideas about what it should be. the mature to bring new legislation through congress. the fact is that you need majorities. even to get it properly in the senate you have to have consensus. that means legislators are often in positions where they have to be supportive of bills that don't necessarily reflect ideally with the legislator would want. but, legislators going to need support, not just from his or her colleagues, but also from

their constituencies another interest they're beholding to. they're going to look to the lobbyist that they have relationships to provide that. the lobbyist may also come under pressure to support positions on issues that tend to reflect the report is legislators. those that they have relationships with more so than supporting the positions of the people, interest groups or corporations that are employing them. we saw this actually unfold in and on ful extreme version withe trial of a lobbyist a few years ago. jack was supposed to be representing several native american tribes in their dealings with congress and the bureau of indian affairs. but, instead to carry a lot of

favor with the bush administration and with powerful republican leaders on capitol hill, he instead kept inventing issues that native american tribes need to get lobbying on it provide campaign-finance support for. so essentially he's ripping off his own clients to better build up and carry influence on capitol hill. it's that same extreme example of what i'm talking about of lobbyists behaving unethically because of the pressures on him to do so. so, this is the basis of the argument i make. that lobbyist are under of writing pressures to not properly represent the positions that there employers ideally want. but, if lobbying is only protected by the first amendment

under the petitioning clause then lobbying can only be considered legal and therefore ethical when the lobbyist is lobbying for exactly what his or her employer's want. the whole basis of the argument in the ethical lobbyist is that there's the pressures of pulling lobbyist away from what they ethically ought to be doing and therefore if we ought to have proper reform of the lobbying system in washington, d.c. that we need a set of laws and regulations that pushes lobbyist to be clearly beholden to the people who hold them and to resist pressure to deviate away from those. and i make it the relationship between lobbying and it's not really all that different between lawyers and their clients. a lawyer in a courtroom can

ethically only advocate for clients the way the client wants. every time the lawyer wants to take 6-inch positions they need to get the exclusive approval of their client. top you should be held to the same standards. if they feel like the they need to change positions to better work with the legislator or keep access then the interest group needs to explicitly sign off on that. they need to know what is going on all of the time. if were going to have some kind of reform, were going to have a better system of laws and regulations for lobbing, we basically need a system that creates disclosure of what lobbyists are lobbying for all of the time. a system that is easily accessed by the people who are employing the lobbyist. that is not at all the lobbying regulation system that we have now. right now the lobby regulation system we have is all about

identify who is lobbying, there lobbying for, how much the getting paid to lobby. it's fine stuff but it has nothing to do with what there lobbying for. i think those are some the biggest challenges moving forward with dealing with the lobbying industry and lobbyist themselves under more more pressure as more people come into the profession can be more competition among lobbyists to build relationships a set, finite number of lawmakers and that will be more pressure to be more beholden to legislators than to the clients employ the lobbyists. that's a big ethical challenge going forward. now, our look back at some of the stops on the c-span city store continues on book tv. >> the title of my book is, pageants, parlors, and pretty woman. race aea