A ‘Climbing’ Book Review

I learned a great deal from this well-written book about the history of lobbying and the pernicious influence of money in politics. One often hears of its dangers but the authors, Brody and Luke Mullins, help put flesh on the bones. They offer an inside baseball look at the personal lives of several of the most influential lobbyists while helping us to understand the broader implications of their efforts.

Unfortunately, I’m unable to give this a five-star rating. The reason has to do with the authors’ obvious political and social biases, though the book presents as an otherwise objective account of the history of money in U.S. politics.

And while I share the authors’ disdain for the outsized infusion of corporate/Big Business/millionaire-billionaire money into modern-day politics, they seem to go out of their way to take sides. One wonders if this reflects an unconscious “media bubble” mindset or simply their need to maintain street cred among fellow elitist journalists in Manhattan and inside the Beltway.

In any event, the premise of the book, in short, is that throughout its history the United States has sought to maintain a balance between “majority” interests and the welfare of the people. James Madison, as the authors point out, once argued that when one “faction” threatens the public good, a countervailing faction must assert itself in order to bring “balance” back into the system.

The Mullins argue that the apex of this balance was achieved during the “liberal consensus” of the 1960’s, the Golden Era. Then the mix of Big Business, Big Government, and Big Labor (the latter two the countervailing forces of “labor, consumer, and environmental movements”) provided solid protections for workers and helped facilitate the common good.

As tempting as this is to believe, and there is much to recommend it, the authors unnecessarily gloss over the problems associated with their cherished Great Society (itself the culmination of the New Deal).

While lamenting the rise of a resurgent business faction in the 1970s, the authors fail to account for the inherent, underlying problems which precipitated its reemergence.

For instance, they never mention the massive spending due to the Viet Nam War or the blowout costs of the Great Society’s domestic spending, which together forced Nixon in 1971 to abandon the gold standard in order to borrow and print unsecured paper money (fiat currency) to pay for an out-of-control national debt (which, in turn, all too predictably, led to unprecedented levels of crippling inflation).

The authors also fail to appreciate the sclerotic effect on the economy caused by a supercharged federal bureaucracy that featured business-killing regulations as well as copious amounts of waste and fraud. Throughout the 60s, the ever-centralized Washington Leviathan just kept growing and growing, spending and spending, even as the money ran out.

Similarly, the authors never seem to appreciate the not-always-helpful role of labor unions and their effect on the economy. The well-documented corruption, mob influence, greed, and unrealistic demands made by unions are overlooked in favor of a Pollyanna-like belief that unions were nothing but an unalloyed good that sought only to benefit the American people.

The problem with the 1960s, one might argue, is that those in charge, both in government and business, never thought the Golden Goose would ever stop laying her eggs. With Europe and Japan devastated by the war, the U.S. had little economic competition. Yet with the inevitable rise of the economies of these and other nations, the unlimited flow of resources was bound to contract. Our leaders never seemed to think this far in advance. Money was no object. And budgets simply didn’t matter.

Thus, the resurgence of the business “faction” was in many ways a natural counterweight to the malfeasance of the “liberal consensus.” Not to mention the fact that without the unprecedented growth and centralization of power within the Washington Leviathan during the New Deal and Great Society, the influence of Big Business would have proven far less effective in driving the agenda. The concentration of leverage and power in D.C., in other words, itself created the environment where money interests could carry such unprecedented and far-reaching effect.

In this the authors seem to abandon the book’s premise, that there needs to be a natural and healthy balance between business and government. Rather than see the resurgence of business in the 1970s as an inevitable corrective, they consistently pit business against the public good, as if a bad economy somehow benefits the general welfare.

And their terminology reflects this bias. Repeatedly, Republicans are “right-wing,” “radical right,” or “extreme.” Meanwhile Democrats, presumably the good guys, are referred to merely as “liberal,” never radical, left-wing, or extreme.

This tarnishes an otherwise illuminating account of the current situation in Washington. It is quite clear that business and moneyed interests have overtaken the body politic in decidedly unhealthy ways. American society reels from their ongoing abuses.

And yet, by the authors’ own account, there is more than enough blame to go around. Neither Democrats nor Republicans come out looking particularly good here. No one’s jersey is clean. Sins seem equally distributed (again by the authors’ own account). But while they do seem to acknowledge this, as I say, their pointed rhetoric tends to demonize only one “faction,” i.e., business bad, government good; Republicans bad, Democrats good. Throughout the book, there are many other such biased identifiers, if only subtly implied.

And that’s too bad, because I really enjoyed the book and would have loved to give it a five-star rating. An even-handed account would have had the same impact and, if anything, strengthened the argument. As it is, the book comes across all too often as unnecessarily partisan, something our ever-divided society likely could do without.