What is Truth?

1
What is Truth?

• Outside Lobbying Strategies
• Inside Lobbying Strategies
• Ambiguities of Truth.

2
Whom will you Lobby?

• Friends
• Persuadables
• Opponents
• Leadership

3
The Ten Commandments ofLobbying

• How to Win In WashingtonVery Practical Advice
  aboutLobbying, the Grassroots and theMedia

Ernest Wittenberg Elisabeth Wittenberg Basil
Blackwell, 1990 edition, p.16.
4
IT IS ONE THING TO CONVINCE PEOPLE YOU ARE SMART.
IT IS ANOTHER TO CONVINCE PEOPLE YOU ARE RIGHT.

• Here at the K-School, you are judged on whether
  you are bright. As a lobbyist, you are judged on
  whether people think you are right.
• Consider yourself a salesperson. You are selling
  your clients interest. Your audience is
  Congress or the Administration.

5
ENABLE THOSE YOU WISH TO CONVINCE TO TAKE THE
PATH OF LEAST RESISTANCE

• Begin with the proposition thatpeople are
  overworked
• When you read a letter that aMember has written
  to anothermember or an editorial they
  havewritten for the paper, or you hear a
  speechthey have given, 90 of the time, they
  didnt write it.

6

• If you want a member topropose legislation,
  draft it
• If you want a member to writea letter or give a
  speech onyour behalf, draft it
• Give press releasesto reporters______

7
UNDERSTAND YOUR OPPONENTS ARGUMENTS AND
REFUTETHEM.

• Tell the person you are trying to convince up
  front what the opponents arguments are going to
  be. Then refute them.
• For example, if your opposition has a
  strong base in Mississippi, you had better
  explain what Senator Lotts position is on the
  matter.

8
Help thy friends win reelection but in
victory, dwelleth not on the power of the PAC.

• Updated commandmentNever dwell on the power
  ofthe PAC.
• gives you access notanswers.

9
V. Thou shalt know thy issue and believe
in it, but be ready to compromise half of
the loaf will feed some of thy people.

• System of Checks and Balances
• Im just a bill on Capitol Hill
• Know your bottom line, but dont start with it.

10
VI. Runneth not out of patience. If
thou can not harvest this year, the next
session may be bountiful.
11
VII. Love they neighbor thou wilst
need him for a coalition.

• As always, victory finds a hundred fathers but
  defeat is an orphan.
• Count Galeazzo Ciano, 1939-1943
• Ciano Diaries

12
BUILD UPON YOUR CIRCLE OF FRIENDS How does one
build ones rolodex?

• Contact your friends in the area
• If someone has assisted you, follow up
• Send a thank-you note
• Invite them to appropriatefunctions
• Take them to lunch
• Send holiday cards.

13

• Call someone you normally wouldnt once a week,
  just to keep in touch.
• Unless you want to be known as a partisan, dont
  neglect those that are in the minority.

14
VIII. Study arithmetic, that thou may
count noses.

• House Suspension of the Calendar.
• Senate Unanimous Consent.
• Any one member can kill your initiative.

15
IX. Honor the hard-working staff, for
they prepare the position papers for the
members.

• Staff often carries a bigstick.
• Staff is almost always overworked andunderpaid.
• A little kindness goes a long way.

16
X. Be humble in victory, for thy bill may
yet be vetoed.

• The pendulum will swing back.
• House speaker Joseph Cannon at his
  retirement in 1923.
• The most practical kind of politics is the
  politics of decency.
• Vice President Theodore Roosevelt, remarks
  to Harvard Undergraduates 1901.

17
Mudflaps

• What do you recommend?