Changing Washington's money culture

It will take more than lofty rhetoric from Obama to rein in rampant dollar-driven political lobbyists.

Change has now been in the air for something like two years. Yet one of the things US President Barack Obama's enthusiastic followers are discovering is that bringing change to Washington in any meaningful form is a lot harder than many imagined.

One of the books I always recommend to those seeking real understanding of the American political system is Democracy by Henry Adams. It is a short work - a novella by today's standards - and surprisingly little known even among the political junkies of Washington, where the novel is set.

Adams, the son of a Congressman and grandson and great-grandson of presidents, was one of the most prominent Americans of his day: a famous scholar in an era when academic historians could command the sort of fame that today adheres only to athletes and movie stars.

From the moment of its publication, in 1880, Democracy was a huge best-seller. Yet Adams wrote the book anonymously. Though the work remained a staple of late 19th century reading lists his identity as author was only revealed after his death in 1918.

I recommend this book to modern students of US politics for a simple reason: remove the gas lamps and hoop skirts from the equation and it remains a remarkably accurate portrait of American political life.

Whenever one is inclined to lament the death of high-minded statesmanship and its replacement by a morass of plotting and careerism, Adams's Democracy is a useful reminder that less has changed than one might think. Most of his characters would be comfortably at home in today's Washington. Put another way, Democracy the novel serves as a useful reminder that Washington's current political culture is not the decayed remnant of something that, a generation or two ago, was noble and pure.

Things have been the way they are for a very long time. Changing them will challenge the talents even of a politician as gifted as Obama.

Of course, intrigue and politics go hand-in-hand, and have done so since long before Henry Adams, or the United States itself, was a gleam in anyone's eye. What really distinguishes modern American politics from its 19th century version is money.

As Robert Kaiser's new book, So Damn Much Money, details, politics may be an old game but some aspects of the way it is played in D.C. are very new. As the average cost of a winning House campaign climbed from $56,500 (Dh207,355) in 1974 to $1.3 million in 2006 forms of influence peddling that Adams could hardly have dreamt of rose along with it.

Obama has criticised Washington's culture of money and lobbying on more than one occasion, warning that "special interests" are lining up to oppose his agenda on everything from farm subsidies to health care.

Of course, the new president is also the successful leader of the most expensive political campaign in American (possibly world) history and is no stranger to big-ticket donors himself. He has tried, however, to build a base of small contributors who could be counted upon for cash at election time and can today be mobilised to email or call their congressmen in support of his political agenda.

Whether this can prevail against Washington's more traditional forms of money-driven lobbying remains to be seen. In particular, Obama has demanded tight limits on the sort of lobbying officials in his administration can do once they return to private life.

It will be years before we really know whether he has succeeded in changing the city's culture, though the key to Obama's success or failure is likely to lie in the political battles of this, his first year in office. If, over the next seven or eight months, the president gets his way on the big things - health care, the budget, climate change and green jobs - then there will be a chance that a new DC culture may take root.

If, on the other hand, he loses the big early battles (as Bill Clinton did over health care) and is forced to retreat towards a more tactical, day-to-day style of governing Obama's presidency will not necessarily be marked as a failure. But it will mean that real, transformational change is off the table, probably for at least another generation.

Gordon Robison is a writer and commentator based in Burlington, Vermont. He has lived in and reported on the Middle East for two decades.