IS K STREET OK?

• Author: Confessore, Nicholas

It can be hard to remember, now, what a successful president George W. Bush had been.

You have to pierce through the miasma of scandal and failure that left him one of the most unpopular presidents in modern American history. But before Hurricane Katrina, before the Valerie Plame leak scandal and the mass firings of U.S. attorneys, before the cascading, costly calamities of the Iraq War and the financial crash, Bush practically ran the table.

Elected with a minority of the popular vote, Bush nevertheless governed like a landslide winner, advancing a conservative agenda at a pace that left Democrats dizzied and dismayed. He pushed through massive, deficit-busting tax cuts aimed mostly at the rich. His administration rolled back workplace safety and environmental standards and rewrote media ownership rules to favor large conglomerates. He expanded Medicare's private insurance component and added a prescription drug benefit cheered by big pharma. Bush was even emboldened enough to launch an attempt at privatizing Social Security, the so-called third rail of American politics.

In early 2003, Washington Monthly editor in chief Paul Glastris and I began thinking about a story that would help explain why Bush was so successful. A major factor, of course, was the overwhelming public approval of his response to the 9/11 attacks. But there was also something else at play. Big presidential initiatives have long had to navigate the thicket of trade associations and other special interests known as "K Street." Until the Bush years, K Street--so named for the Washington avenue that historically housed many lobbying firms and Beltway corporate outposts--always played both sides. Big companies and trade associations tended to employ a mix of Republican and Democratic lobbyists, so they would be well connected no matter who was in charge in any given year. Lobbyists were linked to their old bosses on Capitol Hill or in executive agencies, but loyal first to their new ones in the private sector. Many major sectors hedged their bets, funneling comparable amounts of campaign cash to both parties so they would never be left out in the cold. In the 1990s, a fashion grew for bipartisan lobbying firms, with both Republican and Democratic partners, designed to serve corporate clients in any political climate.

From the rise of the modern administrative state through the Clinton years, K Street held enormous power to reshape legislation to its liking or, failing...