First off, thanks to the posters for your contributions. As you all point out, the influence of lobbyists is more or less institutionalized and fixing the problem is not going to be easy. Take a look at the headlines. "Even as he condemns special interests and refuses money from lobbyists, Obama has followed a fundraising model created by President George W. Bush, enlisting 561 people to "bundle'' donations from friends, family and co-workers," a Bloomberg story said yesterday. His biggest source of campaign money, said the story, was Goldman Sachs, and three of his fundraisers work for firms registered to lobby for AIG.

Then there's a new AP story, which reports: "Freddie Mac secretly paid a Republican consulting firm $2 million to kill legislation that would have regulated and trimmed the mortgage finance giant and its sister company, Fannie Mae, three years before the government took control to prevent their collapse." The firm was DCI, whose chief executive, Doug Goodyear, had been hired to manage the Republican convention in September. He had to quit when it was revealed that DCI had formerly lobbied for the dictatorship in Burma.

Here are a few specific comments to the posts.

Ari Berman notes that McCain campaign manager Rick Davis's work for the government of Montenegro wasn't even publicly disclosed. That's of course true of much work by lobbyists, specifically the public relations component of their activities (as opposed to direct lobbying of members and staffers on the Hill, and with executive branch officials).

Indeed, I told the lobbyists I met with about my phony Turkmen account that discretion was the very lifeblood of my energy firm's business model, and we were quite concerned about the PR fallout of retaining a lobby shop. In response, they said disclosure rules were minimal and bragged about how they could operate largely under the radar screen.

Cassidy & Associates told me it was getting paid $2.4 million annually by the oil-rich, dictatorial regime of Equatorial Guinea, but only about half of that was reportable under the law. The rest was influencing perceptions about the country through the media and public relations activities. Check out Cassidy's disclosure reports for its Equatorial Guinea account. Good luck figuring out the full scope of its work.

Stephen Walt makes the important (and depressing) point that a "political culture that places little value on integrity or truth will valorize spin doctors as long as they advance their clients' goals--even when the clients themselves leave much to be desired." No, the lobbying firm Hill and Knowlton most definitely did not lose business or prestige after it helped sell the 1991 Gulf war with bogus evidence. Indeed, one of the chief lobbyists working for Hill and Knowlton now works at the Livingston Group; I spoke with her about handling my Turkmen account, and she certainly was not disturbed about working on the account.

(And speaking of a lack of accountability, the Livingston Group is headed up by former House Speaker Bob Livingston, a major pork-barreller during his time in congress. He became a lobbyist, you might recall, after having to step down from his post as House Speaker while leading the impeachment drive of President Clinton. His resignation was prompted by a story from Hustler magazine reporting that Livingston himself had not been a model of family values.)

The second reason that foreign lobbying is pervasive is America's dominant position in the international system. In the memorable phrase of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, we like to think of ourselves as the "indispensable nation" that "sees further into the future" than others do. The default condition of American foreign policy is meddling in other people's business, which in turn gives foreign governments a big incentive to try to influence how Washington uses its power.

Sam Loewenberg describes lobbyists as "basically a whole other branch of government." He argues that while they charge piles of money, lobbyists sometimes can't accomplish much, especially so with foreign countries as clients.

It's true that lobbyists are limited in what they can achieve for their clients. The ones I met with certainly hyped their capabilities to move American policy on Turkmenistan. Partly that's because the Turkmen regime has large energy reserves, but the country just isn't important enough (at this point, anyway) as a site for American corporate investment or in terms of offering geo-strategic advantages to the United States. Without that raw material to work with, and given Turkmenistan's horrible reputation, there's just not a lot that lobbyists can do to twist arms.

Still, hiring a foreign lobbyist has become an essential first step - it's like having the secret password to get into the club, one lobbyist told me - for a lot of PR-challenged countries seeking favors in Washington. Buyers beware: results may vary.

(On the other hand, countries with vast political and/or economic assets - the Saudis and their oil, Israel's role as a military ally in the Middle East, China and its markets - don't really need lobbyists. They can be as ruthless as they want and still maintain their privileges.)

Another point Sam makes is that lobbyists spend more time killing laws than they do passing them. Very true - welcome to the Obama years.