Walt and Mearsheimer's ideas re the Israel lobby are increasingly becoming the conventional wisdom. Some day the culture will look back on the vituperation and obloquy of last year as so much sputtering. A sign of the restoration: The Harvard Political Review quoting Walt re lobbyists:
Yet to ban the social gatherings that permit lobbyists and elected
officials to mingle would be ineffective for the same reason that the
Lobbying Transparency and Accountability Act failed to produce
meaningful reform. The law failed because it did not address the two
sources from which lobbyists derive their disproportionate influence:
money and personal relationships. Professor Stephen Walt of the Harvard
Kennedy School explained that the biggest obstacle in overcoming the
influence of lobbyists “is the well-entrenched role that money plays in
U.S. elections, which gives various interest groups an easy way to
influence the behavior of politicians. This will not change until there
is serious campaign finance reform, such as a complete federal funding
of elections.” Complete federal funding would certainly signal a death
knell to the lobbying industry, but it is highly unlikely that it could
muster sufficient support to pass Congress.
officials to mingle would be ineffective for the same reason that the
Lobbying Transparency and Accountability Act failed to produce
meaningful reform. The law failed because it did not address the two
sources from which lobbyists derive their disproportionate influence:
money and personal relationships. Professor Stephen Walt of the Harvard
Kennedy School explained that the biggest obstacle in overcoming the
influence of lobbyists “is the well-entrenched role that money plays in
U.S. elections, which gives various interest groups an easy way to
influence the behavior of politicians. This will not change until there
is serious campaign finance reform, such as a complete federal funding
of elections.” Complete federal funding would certainly signal a death
knell to the lobbying industry, but it is highly unlikely that it could
muster sufficient support to pass Congress.
The key phrase here is author Gabriel Unger's class i.d.: Class of 2011. He's a sophomore. He's interested in the future, not calcified old constructs.
