Fluctuating Fortunes: The Political Power of Business in America.

Fluctuating Fortunes: The Political Power of Business in America. David Vogel. Basic Books, $20.95. One hundred thousand people in our nation's capital work directly or indirectly for the business lobby. That's an astounding statistic, and it wasn't always so. Three decades ago, business was sleepy, relying on oldboy ties with a few powerful lawmakers to win the day. Now the capital teems with lobbyists of every pinstripe, doling out honoraria and contributions to lawmakers and importuning government for subsidies, exemptions, and favorable treatment.

Fluctuating Fortunes is a chronicle of business's political battles over the past three decades. It tells the story of the early victories of consumerists and environmentalists and the Fortune 500's ferocious and well-funded response during the 1970s and 1980s. David Vogel offers too much play-byplay and not enough color commentary; after reading this book, you'll feel as if you have just speed-read through a decade's worth of Congressional Quarterly. Still, it is a thoughtful and valuable account of how, following World War 11, Democrats who had once seen big business as "economic royalists" came to view it as not only benign but the engine of prosperity.

During the 1960s, public attitudes shifted, spurred by the revelation that General Motors had hired a detective to spy on Ralph Nader. When GM's president apologized to Nader at a congressional hearing, politicians sensed a new and powerful consumerist impulse. Congress soon produced a torrent of business regulation-creating the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, enacting new pollution and safety standards, and strengthening the Federal Trade Commission. By 1970, the Nixon administration and the Democratic Congress vied to be seen as more pro-environmentalist. Week after week, as they wound their way through Congress, the Clean Air Act amendments were strengthened.

But it didn't take long before business regrouped and launched a lavish, well-coordinated campaign to roll back regulation. Think-tanks and PACs proliferated, Mobil ads sprouted on op-ed pages, and a new generation of congressmen grew more dependent on their private backers than the support of their party. By 1981, President Reagan and House Democrats engaged in the notorious bidding war over tax cuts, taking turns poking loopholes in the tax code to woo businesses.

What happened between Earth Day and Gucci Gulch? Thomas Edsall, Brooks Jackson, Elizabeth Drew, and others have shown how business consciously heightened its efforts to influence policy. Vogel adds nothing new here. But he argues that the resurgence of business power stems more from public attitudes than PAC power. In his view, the ebb and flow of business political power is an artifact of the business cycle. When the economy is flush, he says, business loses political power. But when times are bad, when the threat of unemployment or the Japanese looms, concerns about corporate accountability can seem like an unaffordable luxury.

Clearly, there is some truth to Vogel's point. After all, the same Lee Iacocca who was derided in the 1970s for pushing Ford to produce the dangerous Pinto was lauded for whipping Chrysler into profitability in the 1980s. But international competition need not have yielded tax cuts and regulatory freedom for megacorporations-and business political power has everything to do with why we see that as "inevitable." After all, reform surges aren't limited to good times. From the populist movement in the 1890s to the New Deal, nearly every great reform movement was spurred by economic hardship.

In the end, Vogel's portrayal of an even match between business lobbies and their critics simply doesn't ring true. By trade, I am a public interest lobbyist (for Public Citizen), and I spend my days swimming among the sharks on Capitol Hill. There, the evidence of business's special power is everywhere. It's not just the obvious gaffe, like the senator's aide who referred to a favored firm as her boss's "client." ("Client, constituent," she told startled consumerists, "it's the same thing in this context, right?")

True, business lobbies often cancel each other out, but that doesn't mean that business as a whole lacks clout. All too often government serves as an arbiter between needs of competing trade associations rather than as a champion of the common good. Consider last year's drive by Citibank and other big-city banks to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act, the Depressionera law that prevents bankers from speculating with depositors' money. For months, banks, securities firms, and insurance companies butted heads. (The securities firms wanted to keep their monopoly) Senators and congressmen chose up sides. The Senate Banking Committee chamber was so jammed with corporate lobbyists that there literally was room for only one consumer advocate. This may be changing as evidenced by the recent victory of a California ballot initiative rolling back insurance rates.

It's striking that this kind of feeding frenzy hasn't sparked more of a consumer backlash. Insider trading, the S&Ls, global warming, Bhopal-all would seem to make for juicy targets. The lack of a fuller response is partly the fault of consumerists and environmentalists, who have focused on narrow issues. But far more important has been the abdication of the Democratic party.

With the exception of brief gasps during the primaries, no leading Democrat (with the obvious exception of Jesse Jackson) made any efforts to stoke populist fires. Even AI Gore, an ardent environmentalist on the floor of the Senate, muffled his populism for the electorate. One reason for their squeamishness is the degree to which the fabled Washington Democratic establishment is financially dependent on big business. Consider Dukakis's two top Washington liaisons during the fall campaign: Richard Moe and Anne Wexler. For the past two years, Moe has lobbied on behalf of accounting firms seeking to weaken the racketeering laws-including a special "Wall Street carve-out" to benefit the securities industry. Wexler, in turn, organized a coalition of business PACs to lobby against strong campaign finance reform. It's no surprise that Dukakis didn't run hard against Republican fat cats.

Indeed, when Democrats pick party elders for service on commissions, they turn to corporate lobbyists like Lloyd Cutler and Robert Strauss, not former officeholders or policy leaders. The least controversial line on the resume of party chairman Ron Brown was his stint as a corporate lawyer

Unfortunately, the tide isn't likely to turn anytime soon. The scope of business power increasingly is seen as beyond the purview of politics. Talk to young Democratic congressmeneven stridently progressive ones-and ask them what defines their liberalism. They'll tell you about the contras, about gay rights or civil rights. Few will answer, as their forebears would have, that their job is to stand up for the average citizen against today's economic royalists.

This political vacuum is doubly distressing since, as Vogel points out, improved regulation often resulted more from politicians responding to perceived public needs than from an organized public interest movement. He concludes, "Some day GM's management may look back with fondness to the 1960s, when its main worries were Ralph Nader and the United Automobile Workers rather than H. Ross Perot or Toyota." What both Vogel and business miss is that GM may need both Nader and the UAW to beat Toyota.

-Michael Waldman