Being a glossary of political corruption, consisting of words and phrases, from A to Z, actually used by the buyers and sellers of political influence in these modern times.
ACCESS Also, the Yellow Brick Road. It leads straight into the backrooms of Washington. Access is what the buyers of political favors profess to be purchasing from the sellers, as in Our contribution to the senator merely reflects our desire to have access to the legislative process. Buying access is distinguished from bribery chiefly by the fact that the latter has been officially declared illegal, while the former is still at large. Despite protestations by political pettifoggers, experience teaches that there is no practical difference between buying an official’s action and buying exclusive access to the official. Also, greasing the skids. “There is no question — if you give a lot of money, you will get a lot of access,” a satisfied executive told the New York Times after his corporation had given $500,000 to the GOP. “All you have to do is send in the check.” Many citizens are unaware that access is for sale, and so, out of ignorance, they don’t bid.
ASK, THE The key moment. After all the wine has been drunk and the dancing done, finally comes the ask, the naming of a specific price; e.g., The chairman has the material you wanted him to see on that tax problem, Bob, and he hopes you’ll consider donating fifty and raising another fifty. Also, the pucker.
BAIT Officeholders and candidates. To hook a major donor, the bait is offered in many forms: We can arrange a private meeting for you with the Speaker; or, The President will be golfing at Windswept on the twenty-fifth, and there’s an opening in his foursome; or, The senator hopes you might sit at his table at the fundraiser. All bait opportunities are based on market price and availability. Overnights in the Lincoln Bedroom and appearances in Buddhist temples have been discontinued for the 2000 season.
BREAKFAST CLUB A well-appointed den of self-appointed thieves. On Capitol Hill, a breakfast club is organized around a powerful lawmaker who meets periodically in a private and swank setting with a group of lobbyists and other big contributors for a convivial discussion of their legislative needs. (The discussion is discreetly referred to as platter chatter, as in Oh, nothing happened — we just had breakfast and some platter chatter.) When the chatter is done and the last bit of sausage swallowed, an envelope is slipped into the hands of the lawmaker, who later discovers, to his or her delighted surprise, that it is filled with checks; e.g., when Representative Dennis Hastert ascended to the Speaker’s chair in 1999, he immediately instituted a regimen of breakfasting every couple of weeks with a different lobbying firm and its clients. They would devour eggs, talk legislation, and fatten the Speaker by $20,000 to $100,000 each time. As a Hastert aide put it, “Dennis likes to do breakfast.”
BUNDLE To get close, but not go all the way. Corporations cannot give money directly to a Presidential or Congressional candidate, which frustrates many CEOs who miss the old days. Hence, the artful dodge of bundling. Since corporate executives (plus their wives and children) can each write $1,000 checks to candidates, the CEO simply collects, say, a hundred of these individual checks from those in the executive suite of Great Big Global Corporation, Inc., bundles them together with a tasteful gold ribbon, and personally hands them to the candidate in the name of the company: George, here’s a hundred grand we’ve bundled for you at GBGC — don’t forget us now, you hear? Technically, the law is not violated, and both the corporation and the candidate get what they want.
CLEAN ROOM Sometimes preceded by ethically. A legally sanitized place for raising bribery funds by telephone. The law is prudish about money calls being made from such hallowed sanctuaries as the Capitol, Congressional offices, and the White House. (Oops, a couple of slip-ups there by Al Gore, but see what a fuss it caused, and besides, there was “no controlling legal authority,” according to the Vice President, and Janet Reno gave him an official kiss on his boo-boo, so it’s all better now.) To avoid calling donors from their Congressional offices, lawmakers can dart one block away to either the Republican Club or the Democratic Club, where dozens of fully equipped small offices, cynically referred to as clean rooms, are available for members to do their daily telephone solicitations of special-interest money givers. Both clubs provide showers for the more fastidious members.
CLOSER The one who does THE ASK (see above). Usually, the closer is not the candidate but a campaign official who is brought in to do the dirty work of asking a potential contributor for a certain amount of cash; some candidates, like Al Gore, are exceptions: “He’s an excellent closer,” a Gore confidant says. Colloquial: one who seals the deal.
CONCIERGE Also, arranger, fixer, handler, contact. Major donors to either the Democratic or Republican Party are each assigned a staffer in that party’s Washington office who serves as their personal, governmental-affairs concierge. Is your legislation hung up in subcommittee? Do you want to get on a trade mission to China? Is a regulator bothering you? Call your concierge.
CONDUIT To play traffic cop on the YELLOW BRICK ROAD. Many industry associations give very little money directly to candidates, but they steer truckloads of it to politicians they favor by calling on member companies to send in checks made out to the chosen ones. The checks are then packaged (see BUNDLE) and conduited to the candidates by the association. There is no limit on how much can be conduited to a candidate, and conduiters claim to provide a service for donors who need guidance — a sort of Political Bribery for Dummies approach.
CONSULTANT Usually preceded by an adjective, such as fundraising, media, polling, issue, speech. The lowest life-form in politics; also the highest paid. “Consultants” is the correct answer to one of today’s oft-asked questions: Why do campaigns suck?
DAISY CHAIN A cooperative effort to weave flowers into strands, as innocent girls do in the early summer, gaily linking daisies into beautiful chains. The difference here is that the “daisies” are dollars, the “girls” are lobbyists, and “innocence” was deflowered long ago. To raise a lot of money in a hurry for a candidate, a group of lobbyists will set a goal of, say, $2 million in one month. Then they rush into the money fields, quickly plucking checks from their clients and other interested parties. They link these checks, one by one, into a daisy chain for the candidate.
DONOR One who gives to get; a political investor; the most valued citizen in today’s political system.
DOUBLE DONOR A company that gives without the burden of ideology or political passion, concerned purely with making certain that, no matter who wins, it wins — a nirvana achieved by the fact that it contributes generously to both candidates in a race and/or to both parties. American Airlines, American International Group, Anheuser-Busch, ARCO, Archer Daniels Midland, Bell Atlantic, BellSouth, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Citigroup, Coca-Cola, Eli Lilly, Enron, Federal Express, Flo-Sun sugar, Intel, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, New York Life, Pacific Gas and Electric, SBC Communications, Schering-Plough, Sprint, TCI Communications, Time Warner, Union Pacific, and United Airlines are among those that gave at least $50,000 to both the Democratic and the Republican National Committees in 1999. Informal: In some circles, the double donor is referred to as a double-crosser or, more colloquially, as chickenshit.
FACE TIME A rare and prized commodity, now mostly for sale. The chance to sit face to face — constituent to Congress member — for maybe a half-hour or more to talk about a particular issue of concern is about as unlikely for regular citizens (i.e., non-contributors) as is coming face to face with a talking pig. It is, however, an opportunity that grows more likely in direct proportion to the amount of money brought to the trough; as a notoriously whorish Texas state senator used to say, “Write your problem on the back of a check for me, and then we’ll talk.”
FLOPHOUSE The Lincoln Bedroom.
FUNDRAISER The organizer of the bribery.
GOOD GOVERNMENT The altruistic objective of big givers, so long as good government is defined as government good for them; e.g., the chief lobbyist for the giant energy firm Enron, explaining her corporation’s $50,000 donation to Texas Governor George W. Bush’s 1999 inaugural bash, said: “We clearly never expect to receive anything other than good government as a result of any kind of contribution we make.” Subsequently, one of Governor Bush’s good-government priorities in the ’99 legislative session was to pass an electricity-deregulation bill pushed by Enron.
HOUND-DOG To sniff out and pursue new or reluctant contributors, like a hound dog after game; to have an instinct for the hunt, as in He hound-dogged that rabbit right out of the bushes when no one else even knew it was there.
IN COMPLIANCE The first resort of scoundrels. The blissful state of being legally covered when accepting obvious bribes; e.g., when the Republican Congressional leadership killed antismoking legislation the day after the Republican Party took $220,000 from tobacco companies in 1998, reporters were assured that the transaction was “in compliance with all the ethics rules.” Alert citizens will note that those who proclaim the loudest to be in compliance with the rules are those who write the rules.
INTERESTED MONEY The golden-egg-laying goose of the political system. Potential donors who need particular political favors are the biggest, fastest growing, and most reliable category of big-money donations: “Both parties go through donor lists to find people with particular concerns at stake in the legislative process or the executive branch, and they go out and hit them up,” a GOP fundraiser confessed to USA Today. Synonym: bribery funds.
KISS To score: We kissed Exxon today.
LEADERSHIP PAC The legalized slush fund of a powerful politician.
LEVERAGE YOUR VOICE Euphemism for “Money talks, bullshit walks”: Representative Ellen Tauscher, telling Roll Call about the sudden flood of political money now surging out of Silicon Valley high-tech corporations, explained: “I think clearly it is important to be able to establish yourself as to how the political process works. I think that they understand that this is part of the process and that they want to leverage their voices.” Synonym: pay to play.
MAINTENANCE Taking care of big donors. Both national parties keep skilled mechanics available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, including road service. Preventive maintenance includes keeping donors well oiled with high-level phone calls, greasing any governmental problem they have, and periodically bringing them in to Washington to check their engine pressure and give them special briefings; e.g., former senator Lloyd Bentsen used to hold a monthly BREAKFAST CLUB open only to those who gave $10,000 or more, and former senator Rudy Boschwitz issued special blue stamps to his contributors so his staff would expedite their mail. High maintenance: donors who demand lots of attention. Also, whiners.
MATING DANCE The cooing, wooing, flourishing of feathers, prancing, and dancing performed by political candidates in front of possible contributors; often done in flocks, where several contributors are assembled for, say, a cocktail reception, and then several candidates join them and proceed to strut their stuff, hoping for one or more matches.
MEMBER A first-class citizen. Membership in the high-donor clubs of either party puts you in the skybox of American politics. Democrats have their Majority Council ($50,000-plus) and two clubs, Team 2000 and the Trustees, for givers of $100,000 and up, while Republicans have their gold-card Eagles ($15,000-plus) and their platinum-card Team 100 ($100,000 and up). Membership definitely has its privileges; e.g., a GOP fundraiser explained to an undercover MSNBC reporter, that, while it can’t guarantee private meetings with key lawmakers, the party will always try to set one up whenever a major donor needs it, adding: “I’ve never heard of a Team 100 member being denied a meeting.”
MENU The price list for ACCESS. The parties have become so flagrant in their disdain for even the appearance of ethical propriety that they have published brochures that offer specific access for specific levels of giving — from $5,000 photo ops with the Vice President and $25,000 skeet shoots with GOP committee chairmen to $10,000 private work sessions with committee staff and $100,000 Florida retreats with senior White House staffers. “We had a brochure from the GOP, and we virtually copied the format,” said the Democratic National Committee’s 1996 soft-money coordinator to the New Yorker. “I wanted some sort of consistency to [the pricing of access]. I didn’t want the people in LA to get better access than the oil jobbers in Texas.”
NO QUID PRO QUO As low as it gets. The final defense politicians offer for accepting bribes from corporations is that there was no explicit promise made to deliver a goody for a gift: The lobbyist asked for no quid pro quo, and I promised none. This lowers the ethical bar to ground zero. Anecdote: The Texas legislature consistently short-changes poor people so badly that the Lone Star State, where I live, regularly ranks number forty-nine in various measurements of basic human decency, usually positioning us barely ahead of Mississippi; beleaguered progressives in our state are, therefore, reduced to being proud we’re not dead last, cheering heartily, “Thank God for Mississippi!” This is now the sad standard of national political ethics: “Thank God he never came right out and promised a quid pro quo!”
REPUBLICAN/DEMOCRAT The two-faced mask of evil intentions worn by most lobbyists, all corporations, and too many politicians: I am neither Republican nor Democrat, but both. Like Beelzebub himself, this is a creature that can take many forms but serves only one interest: his own. Also, Republicrat.
ROLODEXES Money people with networks of other money people and a willingness to work them. The Rolodexes are the prize catches of all major campaigns, for they are the peers of the big givers, they speak the native tongue and know the secret handshakes, and they can harvest checks faster than a John Deere hay baler. “You couldn’t care less about a guy who can give $100,000,” said the former finance coordinator for Bill Clinton — it’s the individuals who can work their Rolodexes to tap dozens of others for $25,000, $50,000, or $100,000 each who truly matter. Shopping-center mogul Mel Sembler for George W. Bush, superlobbyist Peter Knight for Al Gore, real estate baron Ted Welch for Lamar Alexander, Gateway lobbyist John Heubusch for Elizabeth Dole, American International Group honcho Hank Greenburg for John McCain — these were a few of the big-league Rolodexes in the 2000 Presidential primaries. Another Bush Rolodex, Christopher Burnham, who heads a Wall Street investment firm, says, “I am absolutely enthused about this. I have called my Christmas-card list, my professional list, my own political lists from fundraising over five campaigns. When I get through with that, I’ll turn to the phone book.”
SEASON TICKET HOLDER The Brahmin of the political caste system. Both parties now have an ultimate pedestal for supergivers who put more than $250,000 a year into their respective cups, though it is the Republicans who actually designated theirs the “season ticket holders.” Origin: It seems that the GOP’s weekend getaways for donors and politicians in Aspen, Colorado; Palm Beach, Florida; and elsewhere were becoming so overrun with the riffraff who contributed only $100,000 each that your true elites were finding these events “crowded” and having difficulty getting quality FACE TIME with the politicians; thus was born, in 1996, the season-ticket-holder class, with members awarded carte blanche access to the party’s top office-holders and granted entrée to the most intimate gatherings with GOP politicians. Those with their tickets punched are also said to hold season passes, as in Make time this morning for me to see the gentleman from Philip Morris; he’s got a season pass.
STROKING DOLLARS The political art of wooing major donors, stroking their egos, and eventually stroking dollars from them for a campaign. Commonly practiced by candidates at gatherings of the GOP’s Team 100 or the Democrats’ Team 2000, where numerous stroking opportunities present themselves. Archaic: wining and dining. Regional: In parts of the South, candidates refer to this as picking pockets, as in I’ve got to go to that black-tie dinner in Houston and pick a few pockets.
UNILATERAL DISARMAMENT The ultimate dodge, used most often by Democrats, to avoid any slowdown in the fundraising arms race, as in I strongly support campaign-finance reform, but the other side is raising millions, and you can’t expect us to unilaterally disarm, so we’re going to keep raising the big money, too. It is a version of “The devil made me do it.” The disarmament dodge ignores other choices, from emphasizing low-dollar fundraising to pushing for public financing; e.g., Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, a reformer running for reelection in 1998, did not disarm but did have the integrity to de-escalate, refusing to use soft money and imposing a spending limit on his campaign; his Republican opponent was forced by this stand to de-escalate, too, though he didn’t go nearly as far. The result was that Feingold was significantly outspent, yet he won anyway, in big part because of voter appreciation for his effort to restrain the whoring for dollars. Back in Washington, Feingold’s reward was to be reviled by his own Democratic colleagues for showing them up.
VACUUM To go far beyond a candidate’s or a party’s usual base of donors and try gathering contributions from interests they really don’t know. Vacuuming can find some real treasures, but it can also find some real problems, as in The casino boys ought to like my tax-incentive plan; let’s run our vacuum through Las Vegas and see what we pick up.
WHORE A term of endearment among insiders; a politician who engages in promiscuous legislative intercourse with a donor for money. While politicians never want to be called a whore in public, they often refer to each other as such in private as praise for being a successful fundraiser, as in Why, you old whore, I heard you scored a big one with Globex International!
ZIPS, THE The most bountiful hunting grounds for bagging campaign contributions for Presidential and high-profile Congressional candidates. In order, the ten most lucrative zip codes, based on total amount of money given, are: 10021 and 10022 (New York City), 90210 (Beverly Hills, California), 10017 (New York City), 20008 and 20007 (Washington, D.C.), 10128 (New York City), 33480 (Palm Beach, Florida), 10028 (New York City), and 90067 (Century City, California). The five New York City zip codes run contiguously up Manhattan’s posh East Side, from Forty-sixth Street to Ninety-sixth, and stretch from Fifth Avenue to the East River — these are the penthouses of the clans that run Wall Street. The two Washington zip codes are the Georgetown and Rock Creek Park neighborhoods, where the top lobbyists dwell. Fundraising consultants refer to these prestigious addresses simply as the zips, as in My candidate is having good luck in the zips.
“Beelzebub’s Buzzwords” is excerpted from If the Gods Had Meant Us to Vote, They Would Have Given Us Candidates, by Jim Hightower. © 2000 by Jim Hightower. It is reprinted here by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
