Blame the public’s indifference to corruption

People might have been shocked to learn from a report in the Journal Inquirer the other day that $32 million has been spent just so far this year on lobbyists seeking to influence Connecticut state legislation and regulation. But the growth of lobbying reflects mainly the growth of government itself, and lobbying is seldom its caricature of bribing public officials. Indeed, democracy requires lobbyists, insofar as they convey to government officials what the stakeholders of public policy want and how changes would affect them. Legislators need such information.

This year much lobbying money was spent on the issue of highway tolls because construction companies and labor unions stand to profit greatly from toll revenue, with which state government would fund transportation infrastructure. Much was spent lobbying casino issues because the state’s two casino Indian tribes are competing with MGM over expansion of casino gambling, a cash cow tightly regulated by government. Much was spent lobbying hospital and medical insurance issues because government is the real buyer of most medical care. Electric utility regulation was much lobbied too, again because government determines the industry’s profitability.

Lobbying could be much reduced if government got out of those issues. But who wants that except the special interests themselves?

Yes, special interests are behind most lobbying and they easily can gain control of public policy. But this is not because special interests are doing anything inherently corrupt. Rather it is because legislators naturally respond to the people they hear from most and because, as the journalist James Reston observed, the first rule of politics is the indifference of the majority.

The public interest can prevail only when the public cares, pays close attention, and expresses itself as lobbyists do. To get a better public life, you have to get a better public.

In this respect civics teachers at Wolcott High School are not helping much. With the silly political orientation survey they recently distributed to their 10thgraders, the teachers revealed far more about themselves than about their students.

Many of the survey’s questions asked only whether students thought they should be able to do one thing or another without any restriction by their parents. Students were told that if they answered in the affirmative, they were liberals, and if they answered in the negative, they were conservatives.

Even some students perceived the error of this presumption, since nobody wants to have to answer to anyone else and since by the survey’s standards nearly everyone would be a liberal. In fact the answers of the students indicated not liberalism but libertarianism and the questions had nothing to do with political philosophy.

When controversy arose about the survey, Wolcott’s school superintendent ordered it withdrawn. But with civics teachers like this it will be no wonder if Wolcott High’s students, like most other high school students in Connecticut, graduate without being able to identify the three branches of government. (Not the legislative, executive, and judicial but the lawyers, the government employee unions, and the liquor stores.)

Of course most of Wolcott High’s students at least grow up, if not so well educated, since ordinary life experience tempers youthful libertarianism. An observation attributed to Mark Twain explains it: “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have him around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”