Chapter 11How Big Business Owns Both Political Parties

In one of his regularly televised messages for constituents in 1963, Senate Republican Leader Everett Dirksen tried to explain to voters back in Illinois about a strange “creature” in the nation’s capital—the Washington lobbyist.

“Now there has grown a particular sinister connotation about that word lobbyist,” Dirksen intoned.” You think of him as some sinister, skulking creature who is sneaking through the corridors of Congress....”

The scratchy black-and-white film of Dirksen’s comments was shown at a National Press Foundation awards dinner in Washington in 2006. Laughter filled the room when Dirksen’s granddaughter, Cissy Baker, played the film clip and noted that not much had ...

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