I’m a bit late to this story, but still somewhat heartened to find that lobbyists are — gasp — discovering that federalism exists. From a Politico story last month:
As partisan divides ensnare congressional lawmakers in stalemates over key legislation, many lobbying firms find it faster to take their efforts to governors and state legislatures. State leaders have become as influential as they’ve ever been and are now shaping the national conversation on issues as diverse as energy policy and abortion rights. And those seeking a say in what happens in state capitals have been adapting by building out robust and sophisticated lobbying operations that stretch far beyond Washington.
It would be easy enough just to take simple pleasure in the fact that the people who want to influence policy are realizing that policy is formed in many places outside of Washington, D.C. (Though lobbyists themselves are far from noble creatures, and lobbying itself is hardly a noble profession.) And I will take some. But I still have some reservations.
One comes from the article itself. Politico quotes Harold Iselin, co-chairman of the law firm Greenberg Traurig’s government and policy practice, justifying increased expenses at the state level because “states become laboratories for larger policies.” This is, unfortunately, true these days, but reflects the warped understanding of federalism best distilled by the late Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis, who vaunted the possibility of a state to serve as a “laboratory” of democracy. But Brandeis, a progressive justice through-and-through, was describing not the proper dimensions of constitutional power in our political order, but something more along the lines of the obsessively scientific mode of politics in his time. His original remarks make this clear: “It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.” The kind of “novel” experiments the Brandeis hoped states would try tended to involve distortions of and diversions from the political and economic arrangements rooted in the country’s Founding principles. Federalism, to Brandeis, was simply a possible means, not a worthy principle in itself. If that is what this new “lobbyist federalism” entails, then count me out.
Count me out as well if it simply entails the replication of the ills that so blight our national politics but merely at more-local levels. Conservatives are right to highlight and support the federalist principle. And it is better for government responsibilities to exist, whenever possible, as locally as is feasible. But just because government is closer to the people does not mean it will be immune to abuse or corruption. John Adams once wrote that “absolute power intoxicates alike despots, monarchs, aristocrats, and democrats, and Jacobins, and sans culottes.” Mayors, city supervisors, et al. tend to have nothing like absolute power in most situations. But they are still more than capable of wielding what power they do have to what suspect ends they may identify. And thus also can they themselves be wielded by malicious interests and self-interested actors. Human nature is at play both in the city-council meeting and in the halls of Congress.
All of these things are worth keeping in mind if the course of our national politics continues to make local politics matter more.