Matthew Yglesias - Who’s Lobbying for BP?

I’m always a bit skeptical of legal reforms to the lobbying industry. Not that such endeavors are a bad thing exactly, but any restrictions airtight enough to really be effective are likely to be nearly totalitarian in their draconianness. In a free society people have a right to hire people to help push their agenda, and in a free society people have a right to vast and diffuse networks of social and professional contacts. What’s really needed is a revival of shame.

Indeed. Again, the oft quoted Analects 2.3:

道之以政，齊之以刑，民免而無恥；道之以德，齊之以禮，有恥且格

Lead the people with rules,
And order them with punishments,
And they will avoid punishments but be without shame.
Lead the people with Virtue,
And order them with norms,
And they will have shame and order themselves.

The advantage of mechanisms of shame over explicit rules is that it has a flexibility that prevents loophole exploitation and allows for reasonable exceptions. The downside is that the shameless person can easily step around the whole thing.

Obama is kind of caught right now in a tricky spot, because during the campaign he promised “No Lobbyists” but he has found that he needs lobbyists to get certain things done. So, he hands out exceptions and looks like a complete liar, whereas his predecessor, who had no rule and no hesitation concerning lobbyists, looks better even though he had more lobbyists.

Campaign financing is another problem along these lines. On the one hand, in any system where there are certain people who have both great financial resources and a great stake in what decisions the government makes there are going to be attempts by those people to influence the government, either above the table or under it. Therefore, something like McCain-Feingold, while well intentioned, didn’t really have any serious curbing influence on campaign finance abuse and in some ways, it exacerbated the situation. My personal preference is to try a combination of public financing of races, limitations on the ability to contribute to those eligible to vote in the election in question, and absolute transparency about donations, but I think the most important part of the reform process has got to be instilling in politicians the moral fiber to resist corruption. Without that, nothing else will help.