Cost of Lobby

The Republicans call it a ‘bipartisan’ scandal while the Democrats prefer to style it a ‘lobbyist’ scandal. The reasoning on each side is clear enough; a bipartisan scandal spreads the blame, neutralizing the Republican taint, while the lobbyist approach seeks to focus the scandal on greedy Republican representatives.
All self serving of course, and doing nothing to address the real issues of political corruption. Meantime lobbyists, good and bad, are caught in the middle.
So what is lobbying all about, and what are the pros and cons of the game.
Paul Miller, the president of the American League of Lobbyists says most Americans are represented by lobbyists.
"Lobbying is a constitutionally protected activity because the opposite of lobbying is to treat public officials as demigods," said Mickey Edwards, a former House member from Oklahoma, who directs an Aspen Institute program in public leadership. Article

If Miller is right, and there are no real grounds to doubt him, the assertion carries some real questions about democratic representation. Not just the US, but most governments subject to the flirtations of lobbyists.
They might be community or business associations or, as we are seeing in Washington, purpose designed brokers like Abramoff’s little businesses. The interesting thing is that very few people in the community would know a lobbyist if they fell over one.
We don’t, in any country, vote for lobbyists, at least not the wider community. They represent ‘sectional’ or special interests. The Abramoff Indian Casinos business is a good example:
You might be happy to see casinos developed, or you might be vigorously opposed.
Abramoff was not really concerned about community views, accept in the way theyt could manipulate lawmakers. But his group was lobbying for specific ownership interests. To assist his clients Abramoff used anti-casino interests to block development which hindered those of his clients.
In this way he was duping anti-casino sentiments to provide a ‘justification’ to lawmakers to halt opposing developments. But they were just the justifications, the next phase, allegedly, was to pay off legislators to do a backflip and support his casino proposals.

What occurs often, in the lobbyist scenario, is an undermining of wider democracy interests for more narrow sectional interests. I disagree with Mickey Edwards (above). By depending on lobbyists our legislators (in any country) are, at the very least, abrogating their responsibilities to the voters.
Reliance on lobbyists is a repudiation of democratic principles most would vehemently claim to support. There will always be lobbyists in any system. The real question is how much influence should they really have?
Lawmakers are the ones who are elected to govern. They are well paid, as a rule they have excellent provision of support staff and the weight of the established public services to assist in their deliberations. Elected representatives must take up in full the responsibilities for which they were selected, to govern on our behalf, not on behalf of sectional interests.


Wordplay
The word is borrowed from the medieval Latin lobia, which meant 'a covered way', and is related to the English word lodge. The word developed a more specific sense in the seventeenth century, when it was used to refer to one of the anterooms of the House of Commons; in one of these anterooms, the public could meet with the members of Parliament and talk with them.