The Lobby Industry Is Less Formidable Than You've Been Told

My Washington Post review of "The Wolves of K Street."

William Hull, America’s first lobbyist.

According to the website Open Secrets, the first lobbyist hired to petition the United States government was William Hull. In 1792 Hull was hired by veterans of the Continental Army to lobby Congress (then situated in Philadelphia) for additional compensation. According to Open Secrets, the veterans were Virginians; according to a 2009 article by the estimable Peter Grier, who recently retired as Washington editor of the Christian Science Monitor, they were Bay Staters (i.e., from Massachusetts), which seems more likely because that’s where Hull was from. (It’s also where the Christian Science Monitor is from.)

Hull “failed, mostly,” per Grier, and was later court-martialed and sentenced to death for surrendering Detroit to the British during the War of 1812. President James Madison spared Hull’s life, but lobbying and ignominy have been virtually synonymous ever since.

The Washington Post has posted online my review of The Wolves of K Street, by Brody and Luke Mullins. I used this review mostly to explain that the lobby industry, like its founder Hull, is less formidable than generally supposed. You can read it here.