When I got into the reputation monitoring and analysis business a couple of years ago, I started to look forward to Gallup’s annual survey of how Americans perceive the “Honesty and Ethics of Professions.” In 2007 and 2008, lobbyists finished dead last among the twenty or so occupations on the question schedule. Below telemarketers. Below state and national legislators. Even below that epitome of a sleazy line of work, car salesmen.

The poll results appear each year after Thanksgiving. Given the first two weeks of questions in this discussion forum, I was keen to find out where lobbyists placed in 2009, what with the new administration and its open-government, hobble-lobbyists initiatives. Alas, Gallup dropped them from the poll this year. Putting them out of their misery, I suppose.

(Cash for Clunkers didn’t help the car salesmen this year, by the way. They still dropped a percentage point.)

Why do lobbyists have the lowest standing of any occupation in America? One reason, of course, is that reporters and politicians learned long ago to blame lobbyists (and their “special interest” clientele) when governance went visibly awry. But the reason reporters and politicians can get away with this finger-pointing is that voters do it too. In Stealth Democracy: Americans’ Beliefs about How Government Should Work, political scientists John R. Hibbing and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse observed that: “[L]oathing special interests constitutes a unifying belief in modern Americans. It allows people to talk about politics without a shred of specific evidence and, like the weather, pulls people together against a common, seemingly uncontrollable, enemy.”

Now a few of America’s Most Popular Political Scapegoats have proposed that others in the advocacy arena ought to share their social stigma and regulatory requirements. I can muster a bit of sympathy for them, but not much. For starters, any lobbyist who can’t get quality time with decision-makers in spite of these admittedly over-broad handicaps is in the wrong line of work.

More importantly, treating lobbyists as the equivalents of grassroots organizers and public relations professionals ignores the plain fact that lobbying is qualitatively different from other advocacy activities. Lengthy exclusive two-way time with officials and staff offers far more opportunity for influence than bursts of expression which others can access and decision-makers can readily ignore.

Should all those who advocate for a living disclose their identities, funding sources, and expenditures? Yes; that’s how we discover corruption and adjust for discussion biases. Should lobbyists be barred from serving on advisory panels? No, in that capacity they are not lobbying per se. Should public officials document and post online the time, place, and subject matters of their meetings with petitioners? Yes, because officials work for us.

Finally, does this constitute “real reform”? No. Real reform involves policy as well as process. It comes as the result of all modes of advocacy being worked long, hard, and smartly, however they are regulated and perceived.

The public has a clear interest in knowing who is working to influence legislators on specific legislation -- indeed, the process works best when the public is informed. But the issue we’re facing isn’t a binary decision between disclosure and effective governance. We’re jumping into First Amendment territory and with that leap comes the acute risk of unintended, negative consequences -- like freezing engaged citizens out of the process.

Imposing a new set of regulations on those simply trying to draw attention to important concerns risks silencing them. I’m writing here about citizens who come together to try and solve their communities’ environmental problems or health care concerns, to cite just a couple of examples. Compliance with federal regulations can be costly, often requiring the time-consuming work of lawyers and accountants -- whose resources grassroots efforts often lack. The end result of a new, expanded regulatory regime could chill the vital free speech our society requires and deserves. Are we prepared to fasten a price tag to free speech?

Regulations may or may not provide more information to the public, but whether it would be useful or not is another question. Such regulations would certainly not promote engagement by the wider public. They likely would confer even more legislative influence on those with established lobbying operations and those with hefty bank accounts. They would dramatically shift more power out of the hands of the rank and file. And they would spawn even more cynicism about money’s influence in Congress than they would ever hope to address.

Consider the work of advocates in one policy area alone: education. Many of those working to bring attention to deficiencies in local education systems are parents. They travel in small groups to Washington, direct letter-writing campaigns or simply work to raise awareness of their agenda to a wider public -- and all of these activities might fall under official scrutiny in the wake of new regulations. This potential scrutiny would almost certainly intimidate many parents from engaging at the highest levels to address the problems their children face -- stamping out new, fresh voices in favor of those already established. New rules may not impact the financial giants in education, including the likes of players such as the Gates Foundation, but it might very well silence all those small, local voices that are so important to our functioning democracy.

We risk unnecessary silencing too many of these voices, on too many important issues. Transparency is important, but so too is citizen participation. We must balance competing interests carefully or we may do real damage to ourselves and our government.

Perhaps real reform amounts to something very simple: putting more resources towards effective enforcement of existing rules?

Because I am a partner in a public relations firm I was reluctant to wade into this debate. I will refrain from answering Bara’s question directly but wanted to put some perspective in play.

Public relations is wholly different from lobbying. My firm is primarily a media relations firm. My firm hasn’t raised campaign funds for our clients and we don’t seek legislative favors from lawmakers.

I know my friend of nearly 20 years Andy Rosenberg didn’t mean to call PR firms “front groups”. But to his point about advocacy groups, he forgot to mention that along with public relations professionals and policy makers, government relations professionals are usually around the table at those board meetings. I agree with Andy’s point #3: the ban on lobbyists must be repealed, for all the reasons Andy states and more.

I would add to his call for reform a revamping of the public disclosure process for nominees that has become duplicative, time consuming and expensive. I have friends who spent nearly $30,000 just to get vetted. The average American could never afford that. Streamlining the disclosure to one format would be useful. As it is there are different forms for the Administration and Congress, which makes the process unbearable.

Doug Pinkham is correct. Expanding the disclosure requirements to grassroots lobbying would become a red-tape nightmare. Having Average citizens carted off to jail for writing letters to Congress is an ugly proposition. Most people wouldn’t understand the law or wouldn’t even know it exists.

The effort to regulate lobbying is, for those who are ill-informed, a good government attempt to limit the corrupting influence of self-serving special interests. Within limitations, this is an admirable goal.

But further regulating and limiting lobbying and lobbyists is not the way to do that. At its core, lobbying is about sharing expertise and information. Any corrupting influences come not from the sharing of information, but from the sharing of money, usually in the form of campaign contributions.

In the public's mind, lobbyists, money, and corruption go hand-in-hand. Jack Abramoff is the public face of lobbying. But the reality is that many lobbyists represent public interest groups and work to support public policies that broadly benefit the public interest, including environmentalists, consumer groups, and the like. The difference between these organizations and the more self serving (and better paid) variety is the latter's use of campaign contributions as a source of political leverage. Public interest organizations that are 501(c)(3) charities, by contrast, are not allowed to make such contributions, nor to endorse political candidates for office.

If expanding the definition of lobbying were only about increased disclosure, that would be fine. But the Obama administration's banning of lobbyists from advisory panels and the like shows that this is not just about increased disclosure, but about cutting off access. That will result in policy making that is much less well-informed.

If policy makers truly wanted to promote open and cleaner government, federal agencies should disclose information on all meetings, not just those with registered lobbyists. Bans on serving in the administration or on advisory boards should be conditioned on conflict of interest, not status as a federally registered lobbyist. And beyond the level of disclosure currently required, 501(c)(3) charities should be exempted from any new requirements unless there is a compelling case for their inclusion.

I'm not advocating the idea below because I happen to believe that Americans, American businesses, and Americans aligned into groups have a right to seek government action without being maligned or tracked. However, if you really wanted to shine sunlight on how policy is determined and how politicians determine how to perform their duties, the burden of disclosure would fall on them, not on the public. Imagine if the schedules, call logs, and work-related emails of Members of Congress and their staffs were available to the public, media and watchdogs. Then include fundraisers as work-related meetings and bring those under some level of public attention. If people really want to make government transparent, those are the kinds of steps required, not requiring a narrow band of stakeholders called lobbyists to provide mimimal information on their activities.

Registered lobbyists are already subject to very aggressive disclosure requirements. Our efforts are fully transparent. Public relations firms, grasstops firms, new media firms, political ad makers, attorneys, corporate CEOs and others have a role in trying to shape public policy, but are not subject to the same disclosures that those of us registered lobbyists must make.

In addition, too many in Washington are skirting the edges of new rules by the White House and reform measures put in place earlier by Congress—working to ensure that their efforts fall just shy of triggering a reporting requirement.

Our system continues to fail the public smell test because the current disclosure structure leaves too many advocates operating outside it.

As I mentioned last week, the solution is pretty simple, additional disclosure requirements are needed so that the public has a complete look at all levels of advocacy.

But even with broader disclosure requirements, Americans skepticism of Washington will continue as long as they think we operate on a ‘pay to play’ basis. As a Member of Congress for 18 years and now in my 17th year working as a lobbyist, I think changing to public financing of our federal elections is the only way we will ever eliminate that perception.

Groups like Americans for Campaign Reform are encouraging my former colleagues to take the bold steps needed to fix our system. Many of them freely admit that too much of their time is spent on fundraising for their next election.

Transforming our system to public financing cannot happen in a vacuum. Other reform measures are needed to effectively persuade candidates to take full advantage of the financing option. Reducing the cost of campaigns should be the primary emphasis of those measures and elimination of leadership PACs would be a productive first step.

Expanding the definition of lobbying and broadening it to include, among other things, grassroots--are you nuts! The Obama Administration's restrictions are working. The only exception is if you are perceived to have an in. A funny thing about restrictions is that even they can erode "perceptions." There are exceptions. Take the name Podesta. It's a brand name which signifies access and success. However,when you hear the name Podesta the perception is that you're hiring the guy who worked in the Clinton White House and headed the Obama Transition Team. That's not, the case. You're hiring the other Podestas, who by the way are real good. Unfortunately, for the rest of the lobbying world perceptions are not on our side and these regulations are working. To bolster this premise the Congressional Research Service has just released a report, which says they are working.

Lobbyists are keeping away from Administration officials and to no one's surprise these officials are happy not to be bothered. Of course to say differently would suggest that said officials are not complying with the President's Executive Order. While, the report is inconclusive as it pertains to the recruitment and retention of government employees or the barring of registered lobbyists from serving in the Executive Branch, the lobbying profession feels the chill. Don't expand the definition.

The fundamental problem in the U.S. interest group system is the underlying resource imbalance in society. Wealthy people and businesses have more money, time, and knowledge to put into shaping policy than everybody else does. Although some may do so altruistically (or in a fashion that they believe is altruistic), the bulk of this investment is self-interested. Our system of representation reflects this imbalance of resources reasonably faithfully and generally maintains or even reinforces it. No amount of transparency, fiddling with definitions, or enforcement will alter this baseline reality.

Real reform can only emerge from a shift in the organizational structure of society. When workers have a means of representation outside their employer, through unions, professional associations, or other autonomous organizations, what John Kenneth Galbraith famously labeled “countervailing power” can emerge. Environmental, religious, and other social organizations may also provide countervailing power.

Government subsidies could help to overcome the bias built into our economic system. The tax-exempt status of non-profit organizations serves this objective in a modest way. But large-scale subsidies that would really make a difference are simply not an option in the U.S. The government could also formalize representation from countervailing groups, as is done in so-called “corporatist” systems in western Europe, in which business and labor representatives sit down with government officials in the policy-making process. Again, this is a non-starter in the U.S. We are simply too big, too diverse, and too opposed to government “meddling” in the private sector to go very far in this direction.

The U.S. system of interest representation has many advantages. It is flexible and responsive to shifts in the economy and society. It recognizes and confronts new problems, rather than excluding them from the agenda. Sometimes countervailing power emerges on an issue by issue basis, when businesses and wealthy people support opposing sides or when unusually creative social entrepreneurs mobilize otherwise dormant forces in society. But these are exceptions rather than the rule.

Bottom line: more transparency is good and the most egregious conflicts of interest should be addressed. But let’s not kid ourselves: we can’t change the basic character of the system without far more fundamental reform than that considered here. The marginal benefits of tinkering with lobbying regulations are simply not that big and, as my colleagues have pointed out here, they will impose some costs as well.

I would have to respectfully disagree that these new directives from the White House are only symbolic in nature. It’s been our viewpoint all along that the administration is erring in its attempt to limit contact with individuals and organizations registered to lobby, and that the risk in continuing to diminish the role of lobbyists is the promulgation of weaker policies that don’t factor in the expertise and perspectives of affected industries. I can understand the administration’s concerns with special interests and transparency. But I do feel that there needs to be a more thoughtful approach to changing the political system than just issuing edicts and aspirations from the West Wing. For example, it’s certainly possible that the administration could have worked with the members of the federal advisory boards and committees to enhance the current advisory system created by the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) instead of throwing the composition of these groups into upheaval with a sudden pronouncement.

I would also be concerned about broadening the definition of lobbying to include grassroots activities. I think we should be encouraging citizens to reach out to their representatives and elected officials to voice their concerns and opinions on legislative proposals. It’s appropriate that organizations like ours register and follow strict ethics and disclosure rules because we’re actively engaged in advocacy on a regular basis. But citizens should be able to freely exercise their civic responsibilities, and not worry about whether they’re filing all the appropriate paperwork when they want to send a message to their elected officials.

Registered lobbyists can only aid this and future administrations in prioritizing their agenda and sifting through issues from virtually every side of the spectrum. Lobbyists can certainly adapt to new regulations, but before imposing any additional rules, it would be helpful if the Obama administration put the rhetoric aside and acknowledged that lobbyists have much to bring to the table. There are a lot of pressing problems facing the nation, and we should be encouraging participation from everyone to further policies that are in America’s best interests.

As long as the federal government takes an active role in regulating and directing America’s economy by picking winners and losers, lobbyists will attempt to influence the process — and such activity is, as it should be, protected by the First Amendment. We will not have "real reform" - whatever that is - so long as the government remains the leviathan it is, dispensing favors and regulating people at every turn, in ways the framers never anticipated. The current administration's substantive policies, built around increased government involvement in almost every sphere of life, works directly against its claimed desire to reduce the role of lobbying.

Reducing the threshold required to register as a federal lobbyist to below 20 percent is extremely unlikely to result in any sort of beneficial result. It is likely to burden many nonprofits and other groups who rarely lobby by requiring them to consult a lawyer fill out needless paperwork.

There is sometimes a tendency to think that anything labeled "disclosure" is good. But suggestions to expand the definition of a lobbyist for the purpose of Lobbying Disclosure Act regulation raise serious First Amendment concerns and are quite likely to be declared unconstitutional by what is, right now, a speech-friendly Supreme Court.

When Congress updated lobbying regulations in 2007, some members of Congress (urged on by so called “reform” groups) attempted to insert a provision requiring disclosure of grassroots activism, which they deride as “astroturf.”

My organization, the Center for Competitive Politics (CCP), took an active role in the debate to ensure that members of Congress and other observers understood the constitutional issues at stake. I testified before Congress on the issue and CCP issued research and analysis explaining the importance of the First Amendment implications of the provision, and Congress eventually stripped the regulation of grassroots lobbying from the bill.

As the Supreme Court effectively recognized in its 1958 ruling in NAACP v. Alabama, lobbying and campaign finance disclosure laws are intended to allow citizens to monitor their government, not for government to monitor its citizens. In that case, the Court refused to force the NAACP to reveal its membership and sources of funding, recognizing that to do would have dramatically chilled donations to the organization and exposed its membership to official retaliation and both official and unofficial harassment.

Simply put, there is no corruption, and thus no compelling government interest in forced disclosure of speech or regulation of the rights to association and to petition the government for redress, when citizens talk to one another, whether or not those communications are paid for or not. It doesn't matter how a citizen learns of an issue - from the New York Times, from the Common Cause web site, from a friend, or from a paid communication - once the citizen is voicing his or her own opinion, it is the opinion of the citizenry.

The Supreme Court has consistently recognized the right of citizens to engage in anonymous speech, for many reasons, not the least of which is to prevent retaliation by those in authority. During this summer’s health care-focused town halls, this issue flared up again as some people claimed that organizing protests and such should fall under lobbying regulation. The goal, of course, was to limit these protestors from appearing, and to stop them from speaking. An example of unofficial retaliation stemming from government compelled disclosure occurred this year in California, as supporters of the same-sex marriage ballot issue Proposition 8 faced boycotts and other forms of blacklisting after opponents published their identities and names online.

Disclosure is not always a good thing, and the First Amendment sometimes prevents the government from requiring disclosure. Petitioning the government is a fundamental constitutional right, and regulating the communications of Americans seeking to influence their government offers more opportunities for incumbent corruption, through retaliation, threats, and promises of favors — not fewer.

The hue and cry on K Street would not be so loud if this Administration’s new lobbying rules were only “symbolic” steps. But the rules also reveal that the Lobbying Disclosure Act can and should be improved. However, it would be no easy task. Any attempt to strengthen the bill can open a can of worms that will invariably lead to efforts to actually weaken current law. In an ideal world, certainly the definition of lobbying should be revisited and the long-standing -- and so far thwarted -- effort to capture more grassroots lobbying deserves renewed energy. But it is important to remember that the grassroots disclosure battle always serves to enflame the Tea Party-type activists whose intensity is not equaled on the reform side where this effort is often met with wariness at best.

Even refining the definition of a registered lobbyist is not as easy as it sounds. If it is too broad, then the definition would capture people who shouldn’t be, and run the risk of making the system meaningless. Also, changing the definition of registered lobbyists is fraught with difficulty because the term is increasingly being used for other purposes (e.g., hiring rules by the Obama Administration). Focusing on registered lobbyists also proved inadequate when it was used in the Administration’s original proposal to limit contacts concerning the economic stimulus. Getting the LDA right is important but it is also important to keep your eye on the prize – the money. Taking on bundling or placing new limits on contributions from lobbyists are other ways of getting at the lobbyists’ undue influence. It will be interesting to see what kind of political capital this Administration (with a former Member as chief of staff and big-time fundraiser) is willing to spend when it comes to taking on Congress.

A few no-nonsense ideas to bring real reform to the way Washington does business:

1.) Require transparency for all public relations/media/grassroots campaign related expenditures intended to impact federal law making. The money being spent to influence Washington by PR front groups -- often with the implicit coordination of government policy makers -- is as influential as any lobbyist's campaign contribution.

2.) Apply reporting rules equally to all interactions between government policy makers and private sector advocates -- whether they are registered lobbyists or not. The secret meetings held between Wall Street titans seeking TARP assistance and top Treasury Department officials last year were more influential in steering billions of federal dollars than a thousand lobbyists' meetings seeking appropriations earmarks.

3.) Reverse the Administration's ban on hiring former lobbyists (it has been enforced arbitrarily anyway) as well as its prohibition against future lobbying of the Administration. Replace it with commonsense disclosures via public filings and a system of recusals when there may be the perception of a direct conflict. Washington needs more people with experience in how to get things done and this Administration is going to quickly face a shortage of savvy candidates for its policy making positions once the inevitable fatigue of public service begins to take its toll.

When the American people think about what they most hate and distrust about business as usual in DC, overwhelmingly they say it is the corruption and the lobbyists. This populist opinion has driven the Obama administration to tackle lobbyist participation as their first step toward meeting their campaign promise to change the way Washington works.

However, the biggest problem is not that corporations and other special interests employ lobbyists, but that their influence is magnified by the the campaign dollars bundled and raised by their firms and their executives. While the administration’s actions are a symbolic step in the right direction, the fact remains that “real reform to the way Washington does business,” simply will not happen until we work to change the structure of campaign financing in this nation.

The solution laid out by Rich Gold to expand the definition of lobbying to capture grassroots activities is an interesting one; and certainly increased disclosure coupled with the current Obama lobby rules, would in some ways act as a transparency deterrent to some of the very worst abuses in the executive branch sphere. But unfortunately, as long as lobbyists are still needed to accumulate the money that keeps politicians in power, and politicians have no other option, they will continue to reach out to the richest businesses and their lobbyists, who in turn will have greater influence and insider access than the average American. Transparency alone-whether focused on grassroots or inside-the-Beltway lobbying, will never be enough.

We need an alternative to the current congressional and presidential financing systems. And for the Congressional system, I believe this can be found in the Fair Elections Now Act. This bill, which was introduced simultaneously in both houses by Democratic Caucus Chair John Larson (D-CT) and Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC), as well as Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), and Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA), is intended to provide a voluntary viable alternative to the current corrosive money system. By incentivizing small dollar donors and providing generous competitive grants, the system gives politicians (and all Americans) a realistic means to move away from a system that revolves around where the next campaign contribution is coming from.

There’s an old joke about a man walking down a dark street who sees another man on his hands and knees under a streetlight. “What are you looking for?” he asks the second man. “My wallet,” comes the reply. “Where did you lose it?” the first man asks. “Over there in that dark alley,” says the second man. “Then why, in heaven’s name, are you looking under this streetlight?” the first man asks incredulously. “Because,” replies the second man. “It’s too hard to see anything in the alley.”

There are times when the debate over lobbying regulation has that same level of reasoning. In order to try to improve the way Washington works, the government regulates what it can monitor rather than what it should monitor.

Before we consider rewriting the laws governing lobbying, it seems like a good idea to ask ourselves why Congress passed the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 in the first place. It did so to: (1) increase public awareness of the work of paid lobbyists to influence public policy-making; (2) clarify requirements and improve enforcement; and (3) increase public confidence in the integrity of government.

In the years since the act was passed and amended, I think it’s fair to say that the public is considerably more aware of lobbyist activities. Efforts to clarify what it takes to become a registered lobbyist have defined a category of professionals who spend a significant part of their time engaged in advocacy. Increasing the frequency of filing reports has told us more about who is hiring whom, and for what purpose.

However, while thousands of lobbyists diligently register and report their activities, enforcement actions against those who haven’t followed the rules have been practically non-existent. As the National Journal reported in October, 1,713 potential violations have been referred to the U.S. Attorney since enactment of the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act, but no enforcement actions have been publicly reported. Only six employees in the U.S. Attorney’s office have the job of reviewing lobby reports, and all do it on a part-time basis. The lack of enforcement or openness about how cases have been settled serve to further erode the reputation of lobbyists.

Next let’s evaluate the LDA’s third goal. It was probably a huge leap of faith to assume that regulating lobbyists more closely would restore trust in government. Trust must be earned by all parties in a relationship – not just the lobbyists, but also legislators and executive branch officials. While ethics laws governing Congress have been tightened up considerably, there have been so many congressional scandals, large and small, in the last decade that trust has degraded considerably. It’s hard to argue that anyone – the lobbying community or elected officials – deserves a passing grade for increasing public confidence.

Now, what to do about it. Some have argued that the official LDA lobbyist definition needs to be expanded in order to arrive at a more accurate number of individuals who are paid to influence public policymaking. This approach sounds reasonable at first, but it becomes increasingly impractical – and inaccurate – the more you think about it.

First of all, lowering the threshold for classifying someone as a lobbyist would not draw an truthful picture of the size of the lobbying profession. Look at it this way. The current 20% rule essentially says you have to register if you spend 80% of your time not lobbying. Reducing the threshold to 10% would give us nothing more than a list of thousands of “fractional lobbyists” who spend 90% of their time on non-advocacy work.

Another popular option among reformists would be to expand the definition of lobbying to include grassroots advocacy, but this approach would be unmanageable. Grassroots campaigns are often ongoing activities without formal contracts and budgets. Or, if vendors are hired, they may handle only one aspect of a campaign. Many are multi-year efforts to influence policy by encouraging volunteers to, among other things, write their member of Congress, join an advocacy group, sign a petition, send an email to recruit other supporters, cultivate allies, compose a letter to the editor, talk to the news media, or engage in some other form of free expression.

If a retired person spends hours writing letters to government officials, are you going to ask him to register as a lobbyist? If an environmental group launches an email campaign involving tens of thousands of volunteers from a consortium of organizations, would the government require the group or its volunteers to register? What would they have to report? Most important, what’s the penalty if they miscount how many supporters they communicate to or how much money is spent in a campaign?

And, by the way, please tell me again what the point is in doing this. Are we really trying to determine who is influencing public policy illicitly or are we looking for our wallet under a streetlight?

I’m guessing that a complete tally of grassroots campaigners – if such a thing were possible – would identify a majority of Americans as political activists. It’s like trying to define a journalist in an age when we have millions of bloggers espousing their views on millions of different topics. Do we need to identify all of them – or license them – to restore trust in the media?

The “more is better” approach to defining lobbying was unworkable when it was proposed in the past. Now, it’s an even worse idea because the White House is using the LDA definition as a means to restrict the role of advocates. Do we want the administration deciding what grassroots organizations can or cannot say?

In my view, any revamping of the LDA ought to start with adequately funding and arming the Justice Department to enforce the rules already on the books.

After this, if our goal is to increase trust in government, I agree with much of what Holland & Knight’s Rich Gold said in last week’s National Journal Expert Blog post. To improve transparency, the federal rulemaking process ought to include virtual town hall meetings, top government officials should have their calendars posted on the Internet, and the whistleblower function within executive branch agencies should be strengthened.

Here’s one more thought. On big-ticket issues such as Recovery Act grants, I stand by my letter to the White House earlier this year when it first proposed excluding registered lobbyists from meeting with executive branch officials. The people with the greatest potential influence over federal officials are not lobbyists, nor the organizations they represent. They are the members of the U.S. Congress and their staffs, who hold the purse strings to federal agency budgets. If we want to make government more transparent in order to restore trust, we ought to be tracking the efforts of Congress to disproportionately influence the decisions of the executive branch.

Now that would be revolutionary.

Real reform of the advocacy process requires a greater emphasis on full disclosure of advocacy efforts and enhanced public involvement in the law and rulemaking processes through significant strides forward in digital democracy.

If one looks at the universe of activities that corporations, non profits, and governments use to impact lawmakers in Washington D.C., lobbying is perhaps 20 percent of total expenditures. Television ad campaigns, online ads (including those in this publication), blogs, grasstops and virtual grasstops campaigns, and even so-called movement politics (Tea Party Movement) all vastly exceed lobbying in terms of the total dollar amount spent to influence Congress. Take healthcare advocacy for example. Here in the Washington area, or in a state with a targeted Senator, watching television for the last two months would make one think a presidential campaign was underway and the election was a few weeks away. Similarly, the amount spent on on-line and newspaper ads to impact lawmakers on health reform is astounding. A single pop-up ad running for one week on a publication such as this one can run between $10,000 and $20,000. When you realize that many campaigns place such ads in a variety of publications on-line as well as in traditional paper media and television for major campaigns, you have some scope of the cost of currently unregulated advocacy activities. A media advocacy campaign can easily run $250,000 to $500,000 per week and, in extreme cases, upwards of $1,000,000 per week. In comparison, the average cost for a week's worth of lobbying is likely between $2,500 and $5,000. In an aggressive campaign, perhaps that rises to $50,000. One can tighten the controls on lobbyists further and perhaps there are things that need to be done in that realm, but has anyone noticed the elephant sitting in the middle of the room? Advocacy messaging is much more sophisticated today. The human element...the lobbyist...is a minor part of the equation in many ways.

Requiring disclosure on the internet within 45 days of any advocacy activity (broadly defined) including ads, grasstops and lobbying would give the public a much clearer picture of the efforts undertaken to influence Congress on particular public policy issues. How valuable this information would be to the public may be open to debate, but it would certainly provide watch dog groups and the media (which profits smartly from advocacy ad revenue) with the information necessary to paint a picture for the public of how modern democracy works. The quaint notion from Schoolhouse Rock ("I'm just a bill on Capitol Hill...") may there after need to be recrafted slightly, but that will have to come in a future blog entry.

If the Obama campaign proved anything, it demonstrated that the era of digital democracy is upon us. From regular text message campaign updates to virtual on-line campaign rallies and planning meetings, the bar for a truly digital campaign was set high.The best way to enhance the public interest in debates before Congress and the Administration is not to dial down particular groups (lobbyists and "special interests"),but to amplify the vox populi. The Obama Administration should be striving to give people the same capability to engage in issues of concern to them that they had in the presidential campaign. Sleeping in the Lincoln bedroom: out. Participating in an on-line forum on healthcare: in.Online forums on high profile issues (H1N1, women's health, the war in Afghanistan all come to mind) would give the public direct access to decisionmakers, on the Hill and in the Administration, without the filter of the media and the advocacy industry. Much of the effort on the Recovery Act to establish transparency showed the promise of technology to educate, but did little to enable the public to feed ideas, criticism, and praise into the process. This is the real test for the Obama Administration and our government more broadly over the coming decade. Creating a more open, transparent democracy will not come from clamping down on the voices of lobbyists, but the promise of greater public involvement in issues of the day via the internet maybe just the kind of game changer we as a country need right now.