Categorical Aperitif

It seems that the US Chamber of Commerce is worried about the peasants revolting—or at least getting uppity:

Washington - Alarmed at the increasingly populist tone of the 2008 political campaign, the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is set to issue a fiery promise to spend millions of dollars to defeat candidates deemed to be anti-business.

"We plan to build a grass-roots business organization so strong that when it bites you in the butt, you bleed," chamber President Tom Donohue said.

The warning from the nation's largest trade association came against a background of mounting popular concern over the condition of the economy. A weak record of job creation, the sub-prime mortgage crisis, declining home values and other problems have all helped make the economy a major campaign issue.

Presidential candidates in particular have responded to the public concern. Former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina has been the bluntest populist voice, but other front-running Democrats, including Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, have also called for change on behalf of middle-class voters.

On the Republican side, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee - emerging as an unexpected front-runner after winning the Iowa caucuses - has used populist themes in his effort to woo independent voters, blasting bonus pay for corporate chief executives and the effect of unfettered globalization on workers.

Reacting to what it sees as a potentially hostile political climate, Donohue said, the chamber will seek to punish candidates who target business interests with their rhetoric or policy proposals, including congressional and state-level candidates.

"A grass-roots business organization"—yeah, right. Why, if those roots get any grassier, they'll set off my hay fever.

After brief pleasantries on the phone the other day, Thomas J. Donohue got down to business with a top health insurance executive. "We're in a new year and a new time," Donohue said smoothly. "Can we put you on the list and get your money?"

The executive said yes, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was $100,000 richer. So, in effect, was President Bush's push to rein in trial lawyers and lower taxes.

Ah-ah-ah—choo!

The chamber is at the forefront of a quiet revolution in business lobbying. Corporate groups now raise big money to advance broad issues, largely to help the Republican president enact his fiscal agenda. That's a long step away from what trade associations traditionally did: concentrate on narrow concerns while shunning partisan spats.

The big money has become commonplace in day-to-day lobbying, and few people are more responsible for that than the outspoken Donohue. When he became the group's president in 1997, the chamber took in only about $600,000 from its largest corporate members. Last year, collections for that category, called the President's Advisory Group, totaled $90 million.

That's a major reason Bush will rely on him and the chamber this year. "When the White House looks for the go-to people on business issues," said fellow Bush enthusiast Dirk Van Dongen of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors (NAW), "the chamber is among the very first groups that it talks to."

Ah-choo! Ah-choo!

During the first two years of Donohue's rebuilding drive, the chamber's budget remained in deficit. Then, as corporate chieftains gained confidence in the rejiggered organization, donations began to pick up. Now, the chamber is a behemoth.

In the first half of last year (the latest figures available), the chamber ranked first among all organizations in lobbying expenditures, at $30 million. The chamber also contributed more than $4 million to the November Fund, a group that attacked Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry for choosing a former trial lawyer, John Edwards, as his running mate. Today, the chamber is solidly in the black, its $150 million annual budget triple what it was when Donohue took over. It also is staunchly Republican in most of its legislative positions and played a pivotal role in cutting the tax on dividends and approving free-trade pacts, among many other Bush priorities. Whenever the president or his people called, the chamber assembled coalitions of like-minded groups and contacted its 3 million member firms to step up political pressure and donate lobbying-related funds.

Ah-choo! Ahhhhhh-CHOO! Oh God, won't someone please make these roots less grassy? Or at least get me a Kleenex?

These efforts have made the chamber many friends in the Bush administration, and Donohue, whose annual salary is more than $1.6 million, isn't shy about using them. He told a new $100,000 chamber member, Lurita Doan, chief executive of New Technology Management Inc., that he could arrange a meeting for her with the U.S. customs and border protection commissioner. "I'll get you in there," Donohue said. "We'll get you a meeting." Donohue works morning to night to, as he puts it, "separate some people from their cash." He said he annually makes 200 fundraising visits in person and an additional 150 over the telephone to large corporate donors whose dues are $100,000 or more.

He travels so often for that purpose that the chamber provides him a chauffeured Lincoln Town Car for in-town use and leases him a jet for longer trips. "You can't visit as many people as I do and do it commercial," Donohue said. He leaves the lobbying mostly to the staff that his fundraising pays for.

Ah-choo! Oh, hey, Lurita Doan—fancy her showing up here.

Donohue also opposes increased securities regulation -- from the Bush administration or any other source -- and does so with typical ferocity. The chamber is even suing the Securities and Exchange Commission. Donohue has called investigations by New York state Attorney General Eliot L. Spitzer "the most egregious and unacceptable form of intimidation that we have seen in this country in modern time."

Ah...ah...ah...

Some chief executives keep a sign on their desks that says, a la Harry Truman, "The Buck Stops Here." Donohue's desk holds a sign with a telling variation. It reads: "Show Me The Money."

CHOO! *sniffle* Emphases mine. *sniff*