A lot of people are upset that Haley Barbour set up his progeny in the lobbying business. I’m not upset. I’ll tell you why. It’s a time-honored tradition to set your child up in the family business, and when it comes to conservative lobbying, Former Governor Barbour is one of the best there is. If you have a problem with what lobbyists do, that’s not Haley Barbour’s fault; that’s ours.
In this particular case, the fault lay not in our stars, but in our hearts. There have been several runs at campaign finance reform and lobbying reform, and we the people had the chance to get behind it and demand it, but most of us are too worried about men in dresses and Mexicans working on the roof. Well, not most of us, but a lot of us. You know who you are.
There were a lot of reasons why we didn’t call what I did for Daddy “Lobbying,” but that’s what it was. I lobbied for textbook money and other educational spending, but we couldn’t call it that because Daddy liked to do a lot of things more quietly than I do. Most of the guys I used to talk to about these bills are dead now, owin’ to the fact that I used to ride to work on a triceratops, and so did they.
Most of my life, following a very heavy day in the gym, I’ll spend about an hour fighting off pretty serious suicidal ideation. For most of my life, the only person who knew about the symptoms of my Persistent Depressive Disorder was Doug Draper. I’ve lied about the condition of my poet’s heart most of my life, but I’m done with deception. This is me. For forty years, I fought off suicide with cigarettes and cast-iron testicles. I do NOT recommend you do the same. Seriously. I don’t.
Once upon a time (here he goes),
Ahem. Once upon a time, there was a very influential and brave republican and a very influential and brave Democrat, one Christian, one Jew, who came together and hammered out what was actually named “Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act,” but the entire press and the entire political apparatus in this country called it “McCain-Feingold Campaign Reform Act,” and they deserved it.
For many years, McCain was the person most likely to work out a deal with the other side, the way our government is actually supposed to work. His two friends, Joe Lieberman and Linday Graham, and he were known as the “Three Amigos,” and they were changing the shape of the world. When McCain died, something happened to Graham. I used to admire him, but then he became Donald Trump’s bitch. I couldn’t cross that bridge with him.
Daddy and I talked about campaign finance reform most of my life. Y’all probably think I had a pretty weird family. I probably did. The ideas and the people Daddy exposed me to changed who I am very near the core. At the very core is a Scottish brute who likes to fight too much, but has a poet’s heart.
I felt like McCain-Feingold had a fighting chance, and I was pulling for it, hoping that’d be the first step to cleaning up corporate and religious influence on politics in America. Finishing my work out, bathed in pig-sweat, I pulled to the side in the parking lot of the Downtown YMCA to smoke cigarettes and wait till God made me feel like living again, and I heard the delicate, dulcet tones of Rush Limbaugh doing his best to destroy the reputation of John McCain and the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. As far as I knew, McCain and Skip Limbaugh were both Republicans. What gives.
The bill passed, but immediately Mitch McConnell (dead or alive?) set on it and began tearing apart its provisions, effectively killing any chance there was for momentum for the idea. The Democratic Party’s silent complicity was enough to destroy it.
We call it the “Deep state” like it’s some sort of secret society with a secret handshake and goofy hats, but really, it’s not a secret at all. This titanium web of lobbies and candidates functions in plain sight. Every part of our government bows down to it.
We know how to drain the swamp. We always have. We lack the will to do it, but it sure is easy to distract us with things that shine and jangle.
