Mommy, what's a lobbyist?

Both candidates have one aspect to their messaging that I just don't get. They focus on a specific aspect of "Washington status quo" and relentlessly pledge to reform it, or get rid of it, or kick its butt. And I really don't get why anybody is supposed to care.

For Obama, it's lobbyists. Obama's not using them to run his campaign, and John McCain is. Obama will kick the lobbyists out of Washington and start talking about what ordinary Americans care about. Obama thinks it's shameful that the grip of lobbyists over policymaking is so high. And he repeats those points all the time. But it just doesn't seem like talking about lobbyists is ever going to get people very angry, or excited about getting rid of them. I would bet a good deal that very few people even know what a lobbyist is, outside of a vague term for an unsavory person in politics. And while the overall system of lobbying can lead very easily to corruption, it's hard to see how a person who once worked as a lobbyist is automatically an Evil Insider. There are lobbyists that work to keep the corn subsidies rolling in and the tax loopholes on oil companies open, sure, but also ones who try to get alternative-energy subsidies and R&D funds appropriated, or money for an interstate bridge that will help trade or whatever. I don't know, I just can't see this having any real resonance. Sure, it's part of Obama's overall package of sweeping out the dirt in Washington and bringing a gleaming New Way in, but he really uses the lobbyist line a lot.

McCain's buzzword is, of course, earmarks. He'll post lists of congressmen who append earmarks. "You will know their names!" And cutting earmarks is how he plans to pay for his tax cuts and his hundred-year war. The second point is laughable on its face, of course, but in addition, I think "earmark" has most of the same problems as "lobbyist." It's a term people hear a lot, and they know it's something they shouldn't like, but I guarantee that 90% of voters couldn't tell you the process by which earmarks get through (I sure couldn't) or why exactly they're bad. An added problem with harping on earmarks is that, while there are good arguments to be made about the dangers of lobbyists, earmarks are...a good thing. Next to writing and voting on legislation, earmarks are the principal way elected representatives use their position to help their constituents; they're how channeling federal funds to their home state. Obviously that practice can lead to excess, the poster boy for which being the Bridge to Nowhere, but earmarks are not by themselves a negative thing.

In the same way that bashing lobbyists is the main point in Obama's "end corruption" theme, bashing earmarks is the main point in McCain's "end wastefulness" theme, but I can't see that using those two obscure, aloof institutions as whipping posts is very helpful to either of them.