With the upcoming election, fundraising is in full swing. Naturally, as candidates scramble for cash, they take care to say things they know that their supporters want to here. The more important or wealthy the industry or group, the more effort that is taken to keep it happy. This is traditionally known as politics. To some, it is known as pandering. Groups that are seen as pursuing general goods such as clean air and water are good interests. Everybody likes clean air and clean water. Those groups and interests perceived to be acting in pursuit of their own good to the exclusion of others are called "special interests". Those who work to see that those interests are tended to are called lobbyists.
Before you condemn lobbyists and special interests keep in mind they come in all varieties. There are lobbies for children. There are lobbies for rape survivors. There are lobbies for those with leukemia, There are lobbies for business. There are lobbies for labor. There are lobbies for the environment,. There are lobbies for industry. There are lobbies for growth. There are lobbies for preservation. You name it, chances are there is a lobby for it. In the byzantine halls of Washington, if you do not have a lobby, odds are no one knows you exist. If they do not know you exist they don't care about your interests.
A law passed or regulation approved in Washington can cost and industry tens, even hundred millions of dollars. The government can encourage your industry through tax breaks and regulatory concessions. It can also constrict it and regulate it out of business. It can facilitate of your activity or it can stifle it. It can advance your cause or it can place a road block in front of it. Whatever you do or make the government can affect it. It should surprise no one that many groups seek to actively protect their interests as well as themselves and their activities from government meddling.
No one complains when a group sympathetic to their interests spends hundred of millions of dollars to advance their agenda. If a group hostile to your interests spends hundreds of millions of dollars they are condemned for seeking to bribe Washington to achieve their agenda. To call an advocacy group a "special interest" is an attempt to tarnish it by implying they are pursuing selfish ends at odds with the greater good of the nation, whatever that good might be. Is the AARP a special interest group or a lobby? That all depends on your point of view.
A special interest group is commonly construed as a group that pursues interests peculiar to itself rather than the good of all. For that reason "special interests" have come to connote selfishness and greed. Thus a group that lobbies on behalf of an industry to fend off environmental regulation is characterized as a "special interest" because it is pursuing its own good rather the good of everyone who uses the environment. Similarly, a group that pursues the interests of a particular profession are usually characterized as a "special interest" because they seek to advance the interests of that group. If you are going to call the Association of Manufacturers a "special interest" you have to be prepared call organized labor a "special interest".
Some interest groups are proud to wear the label of a special interest. That is largely because the group does not consider its ends to be at odds with the public's. Such groups exist to ensure that their objectives are being tended to They also believe that their goals are congruous with public's, or at least not in conflict. Breast cancer lobby groups rightly believe that the pursuit of their objectives in no way conflicts with any other groups objectives (except perhaps in the struggle over funding, But that is an entirely different matter.) Women free of breast cancer is good for everyone. Their interest is "special" in the proper sense of the word.
But when there are diverging interests, conflict usually arises. Environmentalists want to preserve forests. Logging companies want to exploit forests. Environmentalists want as many obstacles as possible placed in front of logging companies. If logging companies wind up going out of business because if it, all the better. Naturally, logging companies see things differently. Because Washington can tip the scales in favor of one group or another, both are compelled to make sure their interests are represented in Washington. To do that they hire lobbyists and donate money to political campaigns. If you are an environmentalist, the logging lobby is a "special interest". If you are in the logging industry or benefit from it, it is the environmentalists that are the "special interest".
It is easy to point to an industry and or a profession and accuse it, and by extension its interests and the people hired to protect those interests, of being short sighted and selfish. Certainly there are times when that is precisely the case. But is not always the case, not by far. What is good for General Motors might not always be good for America. But what is good for General Motor can be good for the people who rely on it to make ends meet. Like much else in politics, what makes one interest special and another one not is often a matter of opinion. Before you throw the book at lobbyists stop and consider how many of the things that are important to you are represented by a special interest group.
