Barack Obama and Lobbyists: An Inconsistent Record?

This paper traces the development of Barack Obama’s sometimes ambiguous and sometimes antithetical attitudes and relationship to lobbyists. During his childhood in Indonesia, his stepfather was a lobbyist for a US oil company. Obama engaged himself in what many would consider to be lobbying in his career as a ‘community activist’ in Chicago. As an Illinois state senator, he befriended lobbyists and enjoyed poker and basketball games with them, in addition to raising about two-thirds of his campaign finance from big business, unions and Political Action Committees. In the US Senate, Obama was one of those at the forefront of ethics reforms which curbed the influence of lobbyists. His presidential campaign rhetoric was hard-hitting, often decrying the irresponsibility of lobbyists, while at the same time he had a number of lobbyists in key positions in his campaign team. He made much of his commitment not to accept contributions from federal lobbyists, but quietly downplayed his policy of taking money from state lobbyists. On his first full day in office, President Obama signed an executive order restricting lobbyists from working in his administration. He later banned registered lobbyists from having personal meeting with officials about economic stimulus projects. Both these pledges have, however, had unforeseen or unwelcome consequences. Obama subsequently granted waivers to several corporate lobbyists to allow them to take up senior posts in his administration, but at the same time lobbyists for nonprofit public interest groups have been prevented from consideration for other posts. Lobbyists appear to be circumventing the ban on them having meetings about the stimulus package by simply have unregistered colleagues attend the meetings, and are themselves deregistering in record numbers. More recently, Obama has decided to ban lobbyists from membership of federal advisory panels, but continues to meet frequently with favored lobbyists and corporate executives behind closed doors. The paper questions whether Obama’s history in this area adds up to a coherent or principled track record, or whether it simply relates a series of inconsistent and political decisions. Voters actually believed him when he said that he would change the way Washington works. Trust and change were perhaps the cornerstones of Obama’s electoral appeal, but the truth is that he deliberately misled the electorate. Obama has always known that lobbyists could not simply be eradicated – indeed at the same time he was garnering media praise and voter approval for his tough talk on lobbyists, his campaign relied upon lobbyists and interest groups. On taking office, President Obama made a point of singling out lobbyists even as he was preparing to bring some into government. Obama has certainly set some useful parameters to the extent of lobbyist influence within the administration, but that is not what he promised to do. Barack Obama’s presidency will be judged on many factors – most of them of greater domestic and global importance than his attitude to lobbyists. In this area, though, he must bear some responsibility for continuing levels of public cynicism and mistrust of politics, for having made promises he knew he could not keep. It may be that Candidate Obama was merely naive in assuming that he could effect more radical change than subsequently turned out to be possible, but if true he was an improbably naive presidential candidate. More likely, unfortunately, was that Obama was consciously cynical.