Manuel Suárez Mier
The number of registered Washington lobbyists was 12,000 in 2019.
One of the fascinating aspects of living in Washington is observing how it works, and the rituals that characterize a city where power is tangible and the means to approach it are complex, starting with the colossal lobbying industry.
The origin of the term lobbying is interesting. When President-elect Ulysses S. Grant was coming down from his room at the Willard Hotel to attend his inauguration, he found the lobby full of people and, astonished, asked, “What are all these damned lobbyists doing here?
The answer, then and now, is the same: they seek access to institutions and people in power to decide on a cause, protect the interests of one group or industry, or defend against another whose actions pose a danger.
Under laws intended to regulate them, the number of registered lobbyists in Washington was 12,000 last year. But the actual number of people who devote themselves full time to trying to influence government decisions – Executive, Legislative and Judicial – may reach 100,000, plus support staff.
To this must be added the sizeable diplomatic corps accredited in the United States, a good part of which tries to influence government decisions, Senate and House committees, and Supreme Court decisions.
Canada’s legendary ambassador to the U.S. between 1981 and 1989, Allan Gotlieb, used to compare the power game in Washington to a soccer game involving the players on the field and the assistants in the stadium, including referees, coaches, and street vendors.
In his apt metaphor, Gotlieb related that the participants in this sport could play in favor of one team or the other indistinctly and change their affiliation in the middle of the game and that the rules also varied randomly throughout the game.
When Mexico negotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the joke about hiring managers and public relations agencies by the then Ministry of Commerce was that the government had become the best insurance against unemployment for lobbyists in Washington.
That experience persuaded me that, while advice was essential to the success of the negotiations, the work that the Mexican government undertook to promote the benefits of NAFTA throughout the U.S. was enormously successful because it was done so effectively by its officials.
Today, many Mexicans, eager to prevent their country from falling into the abyss, have concluded that the only way to stop the demolishing mood of their current government’s economy and institutions is to persuade the U.S. government to prevent it, given the Mexican leader’s obsequiousness to the desires and impulses of his counterpart in Washington.
The key lies in how to do so, which I will discuss in future installments.
*This column was originally published in Spanish with the title Lobbying in Washington in 2020 on July 31, 2020, by Excélsior.