{"id":7776,"date":"2014-04-28T00:49:20","date_gmt":"2014-04-28T05:49:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/college.unc.edu\/?p=7776"},"modified":"2024-07-02T14:37:36","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T14:37:36","slug":"lobbying-america-a-time-when-business-decided-to-fight-back-and-change-the-countrys-political-landscape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/?p=7776","title":{"rendered":"Lobbying America: A time when business decided to fight back"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/em>Protestors march through a fancy business luncheon, holding signs saying \u201con strike\u201d and decrying intimidation\u00a0tactics.<\/p>\n

\n

A labor strike in 1920? Or part of Occupy Wall Street in\u00a02011?<\/p>\n

Neither\u2014it\u2019s 1971, and the protestors, like the people watching, are business owners in suits and ties. Their message: business, not labor or \u201cthe people,\u201d has become the oppressed class in the United\u00a0States.<\/p>\n

Activists like these, says UNC historian Ben Waterhouse, are a large part of the reason why U.S. politics turned away from the progressivism of the 60s to the conservatism of the 80s. His new book, Lobbying America, <\/em>describes the 70s as a time when business leaders felt ganged up on and decided to fight back. But how could a relatively small coalition change the political direction of the whole\u00a0country?<\/p>\n

Traditionally, Waterhouse says, historians thought of the period after 1964, when Republican Barry Goldwater lost in the most lopsided presidential election ever, as a low point for American conservatism, not ending until Ronald Reagan\u2019s presidential campaign of 1980. Only in the past 10 years, he says, have historians started to take the 70s more seriously. \u201cThe cultural view is that the 60s were the party, and the 70s were just awful,\u201d Waterhouse says. \u201cPeople were disenchanted. But that\u2019s exactly what makes the 70s so\u00a0important.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following Vietnam, Watergate, and a series of economic recessions, people felt mistrustful of government. Yet at the same time, the federal government was increasing its influence. Regulations came into force from the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, as well as from legislation governing pharmaceutical testing, safety for baby products, food nutrition information, and much\u00a0more.<\/p>\n

Many people were in favor of all this. \u201cBig government\u201d regulation could have kept increasing, Waterhouse says. But then something changed: big businessmen realized that they could work\u00a0together.<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore this time, most regulations had clear winners and losers, and the losers were different industries,\u201d Waterhouse says. \u201cIf the government made a regulation about railroad companies, usually it privileged one railroad company over another, or existing rail companies over people who wanted to get into the\u00a0game.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe environmental and consumer-rights movement changed that calculus, because the interest group that was supposed to be protected was the public. For example, if you decide that DDT can\u2019t be sprayed on a field, it\u2019s the business community that bears the cost of that.\u201d This change in the nature of regulation unified business interests in a way they\u2019d never come together before\u2014big business, small business, and within and across\u00a0industries.<\/p>\n

Literally in a smoke-filled back room\u2014in the 70s, it had to be smoke-filled, Waterhouse says\u2014executives came together to decide how to stem the anti-business tide. They formed the Business Roundtable, about which Waterhouse knew nothing when he started his research as a graduate student at Harvard. Nor did other historians he read make much more than passing reference to the organization. It still exists as a coalition of about 200 CEOs, so Waterhouse wrote to the president of the organization and asked if he could come visit the archives in Washington,\u00a0DC.<\/p>\n Benjamin Waterhouse
Photo by Lili Engelhardt\n

He heard back, and the Business Roundtable said that it didn\u2019t normally let people into the archives, but the organization had reconsidered that policy, and he was welcome to come. On his next school break, Waterhouse drove down to the Business Roundtable\u2019s K Street office, where he was led into a \u201cfascinatingly disorganized\u201d room full of papers\u2014the organization\u2019s old case files. Later, he was shown all of the correspondence from the 70s. These documents gave Waterhouse a perspective on the business activism of the 70s that few other historians have\u00a0had.<\/p>\n

As he got acquainted with the businessmen of the 70s through their words, Waterhouse learned how they saw themselves and the country. Despite their wealth, he says, \u201cthey felt they were in a position of weakness. The political sands had shifted so completely under their feet. Their political opponents were very successfully pursuing policies that in their minds were going to hurt not only the bottom line, but also the strength of the American economy\u2014which, in the context of the Cold War, also meant the security of the\u00a0country.\u201d<\/p>\n

From 1965 on, inflation had picked up steam. This led workers to demand salary increases to keep up with rising prices. \u201cBut from the perspective of many managers, this is the whole problem,\u201d Waterhouse says. \u201cWhy are prices going up? Because companies have to raise the price of the finished product in order to pay for the cost of labor. Every time labor asks for more money, they\u2019re driving up production costs. And of course labor is saying: \u2018Are you kidding? You guys are\u00a0rich!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The Business Roundtable and its allies\u2014the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers\u2014succeeded in stopping legislation that would have allowed workers to engage in solidarity strikes with workers from other employers. \u201cPicket lines are threats, not freedom of speech,\u201d said Heath Larry, president of the National Association of Manufacturers. Then the three groups (called \u201cthe Big Three\u201d in the press) successfully lobbied Congress to water down the Humphrey-Hawkins Act, which was supposed to increase employment and minimize inflation, but which business leaders were sure would keep driving inflation\u00a0higher.<\/p>\n

These days we think of business lobbying as normal, but in the 70s it was a big deal, Waterhouse writes. \u201cFor most of the postwar period, business leaders had been loath to engage too directly in the political process. Some considered politics unseemly; others believed lobbying was a job best reserved for public relations specialists. In the 1970s, however, longstanding political grievances reached a tipping point.\u201d Businesses got more involved in direct lobbying, as well as spending more money on PACs and think\u00a0tanks.<\/p>\n

While this was going on, consumer activist Ralph Nader was lobbying the government, too\u2014and in 1975, three-quarters of Americans approved of having him around to \u201ckeep industry on its toes.\u201d After all, who doesn\u2019t like clean air and water, safe food, and cars with seat\u00a0belts?<\/p>\n

The United States was on track to create a Consumer Protection Agency, Waterhouse says, to field complaints against business and to make sure other government agencies created regulations in the public interest. The Big Three organized companies in a national campaign of lobbying, letter-writing, advertising, and opinion pieces to kill the plan. The defeat of the Consumer Protection Agency \u201cmarked a sea change in politics,\u201d Waterhouse writes. \u201cIn the course of less than ten years, the organized business community had taken what appeared to be a legislative slam dunk for public interest liberals and rendered it politically\u00a0unviable.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Big Three\u2019s aggressive lobbying, Waterhouse argues, may have been why Jimmy Carter\u2019s administration tacked to the right over the course of his term from 1977 to 1981. \u201cIt\u2019s clear that there was a lot of influence on him by members of business organizations,\u201d Waterhouse says. \u201cIf he hadn\u2019t been hearing from companies like DuPont and U.S. Steel, the shape of the Carter administration might have changed. And if Carter had a more successful term, then maybe he has a second term. And then maybe there\u2019s no Reagan administration\u2014ever. And then, who\u00a0knows?\u201d<\/p>\n

By the time Reagan was in office, the political lobbying world was much more complex than it had been when the Big Three got together. More money and more lobbyists were going in different directions. And business owners in the 80s also faced the perils of winning, Waterhouse says. \u201cThese guys defined themselves by what they were against in the 70s. Once Reagan is in, suddenly it\u2019s not about stopping the AFL-CIO, but about working within a\u00a0coalition.\u201d<\/p>\n

Conservatives argued among themselves about how to cut taxes\u2014never an easy thing to do in the complicated U.S. tax code. And, of course, cutting taxes contributed to the national deficit. That made some business leaders panic, Waterhouse says. \u201cThey\u2019re thinking instability and rampant inflation. By the 80s, there\u2019s more division than there is unity.\u201d Conservative disagreement about taxes, he says, was a large part of the reason why President Bush didn\u2019t have enough support to defeat Bill Clinton in\u00a01992.<\/p>\n

More than 20 years later, could a coalition of business interests change the political picture again? It could happen, Waterhouse says. If small and mid-sized businesses came together to protest having to pay for employees\u2019 health insurance, for example, he thinks they might have an effect. \u201cBut owners of small companies spend all of their time keeping their businesses going,\u201d he says\u2014not engaging in political\u00a0activism.<\/p>\n

For Waterhouse, who wasn\u2019t born yet when the period he studies began, Lobbying America<\/em> is a different look at a time that many living scholars remember quite well. \u201cI have no lived memory of any of this,\u201d he says. \u201cI may have picked things up about the 70s, but I\u2019ve also challenged those very things\u2014and that\u2019s what historians are supposed to do. There\u2019s something about going back to historical documents\u2014it gives you a different perspective than people have going about their daily\u00a0lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

[By Susan Hardy, Endeavors magazine]
<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Protestors march through a fancy business luncheon, holding signs saying \u201con strike\u201d and decrying intimidation tactics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,13],"tags":[2237,31,2238,2239,2240,2241,36,2242],"class_list":["post-7776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-social-sciences","tag-conservatism","tag-history","tag-lobbying","tag-lobbyist","tag-politics","tag-protest","tag-unc","tag-waterhouse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7776"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46619,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7776\/revisions\/46619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}