#012 - When Did Lobby Become a Four Letter Word?

Welcome to the podcast Change a Law. This is John Thibault, the founder and CEO of iLobby and the author of the book how to Change a Law, where we discuss politics, policy and, well, political persuasion. Because we want to empower voters to start thinking about changing laws. So join us. When did lobby become a four letter word? Lobbying is a dirty word. Ask anyone. Read the paper, watch tv, listen to talk radio. For the past few years, every time I heard about political influence and lobbying, there was a prevailing view that if we just got rid of the Washington lobbyists, everything would be fine. But is this possible or even desirable? Is it what we really want? I don't think so. According to the First Amendment of the U.S. constitution, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Apparently the Founders were troubled by King George III's inability to listen to polite criticism. Basically, the Constitution gives us not only the right to talk to our representative, but encourages us to appeal to them, to persuade them, to convince them to our point of view, that is to lobby. The First Amendment guarantees it. We're doing it every day with our spouse anyway, with our roommates, our co workers and our boss. So why do we have such a problem with lobbying? For most of us, I think we feel that is unfairly applied. Meaning that it's only the big guys and the special interests that actually make their views known to Congress. This is generally true. But that's not their fault. It's ours. In the last 10 years, the lobbying industry has doubled in size and grown into a $3.5 billion per year business with about 10,000 lobbyists. And that's just at the federal level. We, the silent majority, I include myself in this group, have been conditioned to believe that if we vote for a representative every few years, that will be good enough. We'll get what we want. We now know that's a myth. Occasionally the literary, the erudite and brave ones among us write a letter to our Congressman, to the editor of our local newspaper or the New York Times. Some of us sign petitions, make campaign contributions, or even go out and protest. But does that get the job done? Sometimes it does. Personally, I'd like to believe that one brilliant, well written letter to my congressman with a nice follow up phone call to their legislative director would be enough to get him or her to change their opinion about A pending law. But out of the almost 700,000 constituents in my congressional district, there are likely a handful of people who would take the exact opposite position of me. Sometimes they have more money, more time on their hands, and they're more eloquent than I am. If they work for a large corporation with a PAC or are a union member, they seem to have greater political advantage to getting their views in front of my Congressman and often make more of an impression than I can alone. As an individual, I should just give up, right? Let someone else decide what's right for me? Perhaps. So is that why lobby has become a four letter word? If I can't lobby, don't let anyone else do it either. If I can't effectively persuade my representative, no one else should either. We should just rely on the ballot box. But the Economist recently pointed out that as this direct democracy and its consequence ballot box budgeting have grown, representative democracy, I. E. The legislature, has become dysfunctional. California suffers from the same hyper partisan and acrimonious deadlock between Republicans and Democrats as Washington does. You and I have the right to petition our government for grievances and express our point of view. In all likelihood, I'm not really sure that my point of view is going to be heard or even taken into account. Don't ask me why, it's just how I feel. Sometimes I wondered if there were other people who thought the way I do. So I started asking around at the Little League soccer practice, Boy Scouts and Brownies, and to other parents at our children's school. And once we got past the oh, it's okay to talk about politics part, I found that for the most part, everyone seemed really frustrated by the political process. I was in good company. These were just average people. Teachers, lawyers, barbers, car salesmen, repairmen, and a few VCs. No matter who it was, they really believe that if they voted and got their candidate into office, then we would have a panacea for this nasty problem of highly paid lobbyists controlling the agenda. Everything would be wonderful again. But deep in their hearts, they suspected that their singular voice did not matter and so often resigned themselves to saying, well, but what can you do? There's nothing you can do. Personally, I doubt if this is true because I think our representative has a point of view about what issues are important to her, what side of the argument she stands on, and what she would and would not vote for and support. She would welcome hearing from her constituents, either directly or indirectly. That's why we have a representative democratic republic. We elect Our representatives and they make the decisions. Got it. They don't do what you want, they do what they want. The only thing you can do is vote them out and get somebody else in. But why wait two years before we have a conversation with them? Have our apathy, focus and daily distractions kept us away from debate on the real issues. If we evaluated our employees or spoke to our spouse once every two years, we wouldn't have a job or a marriage. The dialogue needs to be persistent, focused and fact based. I think members of Congress are pretty much realists and political animals. They understand that in order to pass legislation, they have to convince half of the House or Senate to agree with them on key points. So your Congressman is always involved in coalition building no matter what the issue is. He is trying to persuade his peers to get them to agree with him every day he is in office. This act of persuading or trying to bring him around to my point of view then is really an appeal on my part and is in fact lobbying. I am trying to convince him to think the way I do, believe what I do, and therefore vote the way I would like him to vote. The frustrating part for all of us is that our representatives don't always vote the way we want. Someone persuading someone else or lobbying someone is not a terrible thing, so we shouldn't get rid of it. Effective lobbying is pure salesmanship. There are good salespeople and bad ones. They inform us about products and services. From them we ultimately learn the distinctions, the comparisons and differences among a wide variety of choices, products or politics. It's all the same. Lobbyists educate our legislators if they appear to have too much power. It's only because we have taken a backseat and allowed a representative democracy to take place where we are not actively engaged anymore. We have taken ourselves out of the political debate and we spend our time in our apolitical routine. Consider the persistently high ratings for America's Got Talent versus political news briefings. If we can bring ourselves together, we could take charge and have a voice in the political arena. We could pool our resources and have as much clout as a top lobbyist. What separates us from the activity of lobbyists? Three critical things. One, clarity of message, two, a critical mass of constituents who believe in the same thing and 3 consistency of financial support for the issue and the persistence to follow through. With these three elements, we too can shape our political destiny. Am I describing Utopia? No, I am simply describing a crowd sourced funding platform for personal persuasion. This would enable the silent majority to debate and express their views. Voting is important, but having a consistent dialogue with our representatives between elections should not be set aside this way. You don't have to stand in the street on a rainy night waiting for the media to feature you on the 6 o' clock news in order to gain attention for your burning issue. Those days are over. You don't have to sit in your public affairs office wondering how you are going to locate 10,000 supporters outside your district. You do not have to sign petitions that you don't understand nor wonder if your campaign contribution is enough to help gain you access to your representative. You don't have to act in isolation anymore. The technological and practical means for political change are here. Today. You can come together to shape your future without quitting your day job. If we act in unison on key issues, it is my belief that we could turn lobby from a four letter pejorative word into a six letter statement of personal power spelled I L O B B Y I. Lobby your political persuasion plan platform. This is a plea for political sanity where American voters get back into the game. This has been the podcast Change a Law by John Tebow. To learn more, just sign on to our website@www.ilobby.co or you can also visit www.changeallaw.com. thanks for listening. You.