WASHINGTON (MaceNews) – The following is Thursday’s status check of developments in the U.S. that can influence economic, health and political outcomes.
• The thousands of government affairs specialists paid by American business firms to be their eyes, ears and arm-wrestlers in Washington are in the midst of the major recalibration that happens when a different president is elected, a more fundamental reorientation now that both the House and Senate are in Democratic hands. In addition, there is a new element to contend with, a “movement” of like-minded domestic actors intent on disruption.
• To begin with, the influence professionals are tasked with laying out a budget for lobbying and campaign contributions for the year ahead, to optimize the impact and align the spending with particular firm and industry goals. After sending the three-month, six-month and annual spend schedule to headquarters, they wait for feedback, objections, guidance and commitment. While the calculations that go into influence execution can be many layered and complex, they are not as tied to partisan politics as is often assumed. It is a much more clinical exercise. Whether at its heart the process is cynical or enlightened is in the eye of the beholder. Among some common assumptions are the facts on the ground that are not in dispute, at least among the professionals.
• First, the implosion of campaign contributions from business, the Koch empire and the late Sheldon Adelson’s operation is much more pervasive than the headlines about major names indicates. Most firms don’t advertise their leanings and often it’s only the CEO, perhaps in consultation with the board of directors, who makes the government affairs decisions on priorities and resources to be made available. The spectacle of the Capitol being desecrated by invaders shook the foundational bases for corporate decision making. The nation’s rule of law, relative political stability and what corporate America assumed was its familiarity with how things work in government and society suddenly are taken less for granted. The Capitol siege sent a huge and unexpected shudder through the C-suites. The perceptual earthquake will have aftershocks for a long time. In concrete terms, national fractures are far less dormant. Every strategic analysis firm, every security consultant, every ex-government cyberspace expert will be making the rounds of boardrooms, explaining the new threat to critical infrastructure since the Nashville AT&T building bombing, the Capitol exposition of a “movement,” the implications of a coalition of domestic action-oriented conspiracy theorists. Plotters against governors and legislatures are emboldened and on the move.
• Second, money is Washington’s trim tab. Its force is like dark matter, unseen in its magnitude but exerting a constant pull that over time is irresistible. CEOs come and go but at the top level the culture of influence control is embedded in every up and coming successor long before getting the nod to take over the budget. From that point of view, anyone wondering why so many Republican House members seemed glued to Trump in the impeachment vote, the Electoral College certification vote and other votes to come may come to realize simply that they have nowhere else to go right now. Fearful of Democratic ideological repression as Trump fades, Republicans feel the need to formulate a better path to survival. In other words, for the influence professional, a teaching moment is at hand and will be for some time. If Republicans take back the House in two years, there will be plenty of customized welcome mats prepared well in advance.
• Third, professional influence execution requires the long view and it is grounded in a very simple imperative. Again, it is to give your intended target somewhere to go. Whether Republican or Democratic party functionaries, union interests, education and health care industries or plain vanilla corporate interests, the game in Washington is to build a scenario that serves your interests, to reinforce its structural context in ways subtle and incrementally more intense until it becomes not a novel concept but an accepted theme in every debate.
• Fourth, the main value-added bought with the money spent maintaining those analysts and lobbyists in Washington is the intelligence they gather. It is the wise chief executive who can stomach the bad news that comes over the transom instead of discouraging its arrival as is the case in many corporate headquarters. Listening can be very hard for the average CEO.
• Fifth, the astute influencer stays aware of what peers are hearing, reading, discussing and using to formulate their policy. It’s vital to know whether the money you’re spending is being neutralized by money someone else is spending or whether it is riding a wave of reinforcement. For instance, Wednesday’s conservative National Review interview with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was pure gold, passed around and valued for some priceless insights. What, business is listening to an aspiring Socialist? Washington watchers have picked up signals of a hard-nosed strategist beneath her mantle of ultra-liberalism. That she sees the Georgia runoffs as the manifestation of years of changes, that the Southern culture is emerging from “suppression” rather than being an enclave of reactionary rednecks, is the kind of hint that means a lot for site location decisions. Cheaper labor, technically adept labor pulls evolution forward, attracting investment and with it immense change. It’s not all positive. Unsettling change can foment riots inside the Capitol. Business assumes the Biden Administration will have every bit as much an “America First” orientation as the Trump administration, using different terms with different emphasis, but expansion within the continental United States is now a given priority.
• Among the professionals the pending Senate trial of Donald Trump is in one view a sideshow. The economy doesn’t care. Yet that view is hardly predominant in the top echelons of the nation’s business culture. At that level there is another view that the trial and the issues at stake have a centrality to America’s future that is virtually boundless. In that view everything that corporate America wants to maintain and is willing to spend to maintain is at risk. It is that realization that will be animating the Washington club of government affairs specialists in the year ahead. It is a story that is just beginning.
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Contact this writer: denny@macenews.com.
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