A discussion with a lobbyist

I recently had an interesting discussion with a lobbyist, one of those people who hang around Washington and try to influence laws on behalf of whoever's paying them. I met this particular lobbyist at a standards meeting, and we had an interesting discussion about the behavior of politicians. This particular lobbyist told me that he found that most politicians are actually fairly reasonable most of the time and try to get reasonable laws passed and are generally open to reasonable compromises to get that to happen.

At least that's until an issue starts making headlines. At that point, everything changes. That's when people start voting along party lines and the chances for reasonable compromises seem to go out the window.

The discussion that I had was actually about the lobbyist's efforts to influence Congress to pass laws changing how credit card companies do business in the US, but his comments seem applicable to more situations that just that one. Like the stuff that's making the headlines these days.