It's Friday, so I'll keep this brief. Thanks again to those who participated, and thanks also to TPM Café for hosting the discussion.

I'm encouraged, in a dark way, that other commentators, like me, are pretty much stumped in terms of coming up with solutions to reduce the influence of lobbyists. People ask for hard suggestions all the time, and it's hard to give answers that aren't pie-in-the-sky. Of course, I'm discouraged for the same reason; the difficulty is figuring out what to points to the intractable nature of the problem and the way that lobbyists are so entirely interwoven into the political system.

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Well, it seems like we are all agreed that lobbying is under-regulated and does not receive enough scrutiny in the media. Ted, you specifically point to the dangers posed by a passive press. And of course, the big fallout from Ken's Harper's piece was not the story itself but the media reaction to it, and specifically the controversy over his use of under-cover techniques. So maybe that can lead us in an interesting direction. I had no problem with it, and in fact found it all quite thrilling and often hilarious (an under-appreciated aspect of Silverstein's work...). On the other hand, that is more or less a one-shot story. You can't cover lobbying regularly by going undercover or in any way misleading your sources - just like any other beat. So while it was an enlightening and entertaining to get into what can be a tired subject, it is not really sustainable. And when the press does cover lobbying, it is usually these odd scandals that are way off the norm and don't really tell you much at all - Abramoff's frauds (which really had nothing to do with lobbying, per se) and John McCain's indiscretions.

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Let me begin by complimenting my fellow commentators for their insightful reactions to Ken's excellent book. There is considerable consensus among us about the important and often negative role that lobbying plays, and I hope TPM readers are finding this conversation enlightening.

I'd like to make five additional points, mostly in reaction to Ken's original post.

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Lobbying is really the Washington issue that keeps on giving. There's a
dozen ways at least to approach the subject, and the previous posts have
hit on many of its most interesting points. Turkmeniscam is a great conversation starter about lobbying. But it also does one thing that is
really tough to do: provide the details, the intricacies, as Ari points out,
of the lobby business.

Almost all lobbying is fairly standard-issue stuff. You make your case to
the members or staff about your client's issue. End of story. It's only when
you reveal how people do that, the game plans they intend to use, the
parties they plan to sponsor, that the story gets really interesting.

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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.

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First of all, I'd like to congratulate Ken Silverstein on his revelatory article in Harper's and subsequent book. Thanks for letting me add my two cents. I remember seeing Ken in Washington shortly after his piece came out and wondering how he spent months in a city as small as DC disguised as a bearded lobbyist for Turkmenistan. Quite a feat of investigative reporting.

There was some brouhaha following Ken's piece about whether it was proper journalistic ethics for him to go undercover and knowingly mislead his fellow lobbyists. But I don't think Ken had any choice--to get a great story about Washington lobbyists, Ken had to become one of them. That's because lobbyists working in America have to disclose very little about what they're actually up to and American lobbyists working abroad don't have to disclose anything.

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In his Farewell Address, George Washington famously warned against the
"insidious wiles of foreign influence." In the instructive but depressing new book Turkmeniscam, Ken Silverstein shows that this danger is very real. Moreover, it's mostly our own fault. Why is it so easy for foreign governments to sell themselves in Washington? Because there are plenty of people inside the Beltway who are for sale--or at least for rent.

Lobbying does not occur in a vacuum, of course, and three features of contemporary U.S. politics account for the extent of this problem. The first is the extraordinary openness of the American political system, which gives anyone seeking to advance some cause numerous points of access. There are 535 members of the House and Senate, and one or two well-placed legislators on Capitol Hill can do you a lot of favors so long as the rest of their colleagues don't know or care about the issue at hand. If working the Hill doesn't pan out, there will be individuals in the Executive Branch who will be willing to advance some foreign power's agenda, particularly if that agenda is being pushed by experienced Washington insiders. As Silverstein shows, lobbying firms can also count on sympathetic think tanks and a pliable media to lend their efforts a patina of legitimacy.

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Hey there Ken. I've just received your book and am much enjoying it. As with your original Harper's piece, you've managed to lay the issues out sharply and with the context that is usually lacking, and you've come up with anecdotes that are surprising and infuriating - and I say that having covered lobbying for some 15 years.

Now, to your questions:
Lobbyists are basically a whole other branch of government. Given that, they are often both expensive and ineffective, just like the legislative and executive branches. Lots of money spent on pricey K-Street firms probably doesn't accomplish much - and especially so with foreign countries as clients. As you point out, conditions have to be right for a member of Congress to want to go out on a limb for some shady regime or interest. That said, somebody in Washington is always ready to take their money.

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The presidential election is in full swing and so, as happens like clockwork every four years, American politicians hates lobbyists and "special interest groups." John McCain recently referred to lobbyists as "birds of prey" and promised that anyone working for his administration would face a lifetime ban from the profession. Barack Obama won't take any money from lobbyists and promises to greatly diminish their role in Washington in his quest for good government.

It's hard to take any of this too seriously. The McCain camp, as has been widely noted, has rather obvious and embarrassing ties to lobbyists. Start here with campaign chairman Rick Davis, who a few years back was representing telecommunications firms before McCain's Senate Commerce Committee. Then there's Charlie Black, who has a long history of working for the most ethically challenged clients, ranging from Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines to Mobutu Sese Seko in what used to be called, as has been widely noted, Zaire.

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