[Just_Smith]

It looks as if it began mid-70s. You can see the red and blue start diverging then, though the line stroke width causes some overlap. The heavy divergence begins in the 80's, as you pointed out.

I think confirming your theory would be as simple as comparing the policies of "Reaganomics" with the policies that emerged in the 70's that caused the initial bump shown on the chart.

[jnellis]

There's a fellow that's discovered a piece of legislation in 1970 that was the turning point for all this lobbying taking over congress so heavily. The lynch pin of his argument is that we have to remove lobbyists from the actual physical galleries in congress and preserve the anonymous nature of how each congressman votes so they can vote their conscious and not how their lobbyist handlers choose. It's a counter-intuitive idea because everyone is already sold on wanting to know how their congressmen voted.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=cardboard+box+r...

[roenxi]

As ideas go this is a bit of a non-starter. If you can't tell what your congressperson is voting for, how do you know if they are representing you? When you vote, how would it be even theoretically possible to make an informed decision of who you want as a representative?

The only axis of discrimination between politicians would be charisma - which is no predictor at all of what someone will actually do.

EDIT It might be even easier for handlers to corrupt the system, because they could make it known that if a bill gets through, they'll be generous with their largess to everyone - and there will be know way to verify which politicians are the ones who are being bought off.

[zanny]

Charisma is only a problem when your representative is a figure on a screen you never see or interact with. Its definitely fallen by the wayside in recent times with the explosive population and suffrage growth not corresponding to a larger legislature, but there is ample historic record of the aristocratic voters in the decades following the founding of the US also having close relations to their representatives. The voters (the <10% of the population eligible) often had regular, direct access to converse and interact with those they elected.

In more modern terms it would be if you weren't electing a representative for every several hundred thousand people, but had one for every few hundred. Something constrained by Dunbars Number. You wouldn't be electing a caricature but someone you can actually interact with, especially in an era of total digital interconnection.

Fixing representative democracy in the US and abroad is probably the most fundamental issue facing America and most of the world today. Getting back to actual representation by peers has to happen eventually or the widening divide between the political aristocracy and the commoner will revert most of western society back into a model more reminiscent of 16th century Britain.

[beat]

I don't see how we can make Congress vote anonymously, and I'm pretty sure that's not good public policy.

And in general, I don't like attributing these things to a single cause of "corruption". It's too neat, too easy.

[specialist]

The criticisms of so called sunshine laws are unconvincing. Any one supporting more direct democracy will favor such reforms.

As for why things took a right-wing turn in the mid-70s, I prefer this thesis:

Lobbying America: The Politics of Business from Nixon to NAFTA

https://www.amazon.com/Lobbying-America-Politics-Business-So...

TL;DR: Titans of industry felt persecuted, rolled back The New Deal.

"Lobbying America tells the story of the political mobilization of American business in the 1970s and 1980s. Benjamin Waterhouse traces the rise and ultimate fragmentation of a broad-based effort to unify the business community and promote a fiscally conservative, antiregulatory, and market-oriented policy agenda to Congress and the country at large. Arguing that business's political involvement was historically distinctive during this period, Waterhouse illustrates the changing power and goals of America's top corporate leaders.

Examining the rise of the Business Roundtable and the revitalization of older business associations such as the National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Waterhouse takes readers inside the mind-set of the powerful CEOs who responded to the crises of inflation, recession, and declining industrial productivity by organizing an effective and disciplined lobbying force. By the mid-1970s, that coalition transformed the economic power of the capitalist class into a broad-reaching political movement with real policy consequences. Ironically, the cohesion that characterized organized business failed to survive the ascent of conservative politics during the 1980s, and many of the coalition's top goals on regulatory and fiscal policies remained unfulfilled. The industrial CEOs who fancied themselves the "voice of business" found themselves one voice among many vying for influence in an increasingly turbulent and unsettled economic landscape.

Complicating assumptions that wealthy business leaders naturally get their way in Washington, Lobbying America shows how economic and political powers interact in the American democratic system."