In the tremulous 1960s, even futurist John Naisbitt of Megatrends fame could not have envisioned industry’s overwhelming influence on government policies in the second decade of the 21st century, or the private sector’s general abandonment of the little guy to vagaries of the marketplace.
What old timers view as radical change, baby boomers accept as the new normal. They cannot imagine a time business simply pleaded for less regulation rather than filling campaign coffers to get its way.
In the 1960s, government initiated exchange programs that encouraged industry executives to serve in government for a year or two, and for government officials to serve in business. The goal, said John Macy, then director of the Civil Service Commission, was to develop mutual appreciation and strengthen business-government relations.
John W. Gardner, author of Excellence and other inspiration books, and Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare in the Johnson administration, created the White House Fellows program to encourage the best and brightest young people in every field to acquire high-level government experience.
Dan H. Fenn, Jr. and I organized 35 informal, off-the-record business-government dinner discussions between 1964 and 1970, hosted by CEOs of major companies, to reduce tensions and improve communication. Hosts and their business guests did not learn the names of government guests until the night of the dinner.
That industry has played an inextricable role in social issues by its very existence was fully acknowledged, and that business leaders should have a stronger voice in writing rules and regulations governing the private sector was fully accepted.
CEOs loaned executives to the National Alliance of Business, the National Urban Coalition, and the National Minority Supplier Development Council. Several developed extensive corporate social responsibility programs that greatly increased employment of minorities and the purchases of goods and services from minority-owned firms.
Several CEOs who’d shunned Washington opened offices in the nation’s capital, and abandoning strident narrow interest appeals, presented their legitimate concerns within a broad framework of national and international interests. Many of us believed the trauma of the 1960s had united business and government in a new and enduring partnership. That proved to be wishful thinking. When smoke cleared from city streets and students returned to classrooms, business leaders backed away from social responsibility.
They acknowledged that where they located manufacturing plants also determined where new homes, roads and schools would be built, but their zeal for social marketing quickly waned.
With Ronald Reagan’s overt blessing in the 1980s, industry decided it should be the senior partner in any alliance with government. The strategy, unannounced but critical, was to curb government regulations by filling political campaign coffers, beefing up trade associations, and hiring more lobbyists. Incumbent office holders felt the pressure. And that pressure intensified as business increased its contributions. Aspiring political candidates were either beholden or ignored from the start.
It takes huge amounts of cash to run a political campaign. And industry became principal banker for favored candidates’ who supported deregulating the marketplace. Political Action Committees flourished. And the Supreme Court ruled that corporations could hide sources of campaign funding. Public financing is anathema to industry. And the transparency so vital to conducting the public’s business in a democracy has almost vanished.
Defense contractors have had a double advantage. Military build-up over several decades has given them enormous power, and defense plants are located in almost every congressional district. Voting against a military gismo, whether needed or not, is a vote against jobs. Much too late, Dwight Eisenhower’s warning that an ever-growing military-industrial complex would control both the nation’s economy and its policies became painfully clear.
Today, elected officials vote for military products the secretary of defense insists are unneeded, unwanted and a waste of taxpayers’ money in the midst of a rough economic downturn. But jobs trump national interest and debt reduction. Military incursions, invasions, no-fly zones and arms shipments have militarized international relations and consumed many billions of dollars borrowed from China, while mental health and social service budgets are slashed and our nation’s infrastructure deteriorates. No one has a handle on military spending. Not even the auditors. The United States is the world’s number one arms merchant, and the military-industrial complex has set national priorities. Upside down.
Industry could not have managed its takeover of public policy without government’s complicity. First, by allowing business to dominate Congress. Second, by lack of transparency that obscured a changing balance of power between the public and private sectors. Third, by failing to learn from Vietnam, El Salvador, Iran-Contra and other misadventures, and promoting needless and seemingly endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fourth, by failing to regulate unbridled greed on Wall Street, and letting average citizens shoulder horrendous burdens the fat cats created.
Government failed to keep citizens informed; to partner with, but never be dominated by industry, and to use the confidential stamp judiciously rather than to cover secret deals and embarrassments. For example, no report has ever been published of a closed meeting of industry executives at the White House that determined the nation’s energy policy.
That’s why the 1966 Freedom of Information Act needs strengthening, not more restrictions, as currently proposed, that would hide information the people should have and make access still more difficult for press and public.
Transparency is democracy’s requisite attribute. Sunlight focuses leaders’ on the national interest and away from special interests, and discourages acts of war until all other options have been exhausted. Transparency might well have saved us from near financial collapse. Even war. And transparency – real transparency - would reveal the true costs of military misadventures that savage domestic budgets. Transparency could even restore an appropriate balance of power between the public and private sectors.
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