Truth be told, there are few smoke-filled rooms in Washington these days. The city council is set to tighten its smoking ban,
zentai and Big Tobacco simply doesn't loom as large as it once did. But the public view of billion-dollar deals in dark corners and arm-twisting behind closed doors is about to get a Hollywood endorsement with the Mar. 17 premiere of Thank You for Smoking, a gleeful lampoon of the Beltway's culture of spin. Thank You's three amigos work for the alcohol, tobacco, and firearms industries and call their lunch bunch the M.O.D. Squad, for ''Merchants of Death.'' The central character, menthol-smooth tobacco spokesman Nick Naylor, played by Aaron Eckhart, sets the scene with a simple observation: ''This profession requires a moral flexibility that goes beyond most people.'' The real-life M.O.D. Squad doesn't have weekly lunches. But BusinessWeek assembled just such a group on Mar. 7 to ask: Do Sin Industry lobbyists lose sleep at night? First, the lobbyists -- who prowl Gulch and spin the press and the Hill on tobacco, guns, and booze -- screened the film. (One liquor lobbyist declined our invitation, fearing that his industry would be tarred by associating with...tobacco.) Then they dined at Washington power restaurant The Palm with Christopher Buckley, author of the 1994 book that inspired the movie. There, they reflected on their careers. The collective theme: It's hard out here for a lobbyist. The uproar over the illegal dealings of Washington influence peddler Jack Abramoff has drawn global attention to an industry that would rather duck and cover. Congress is contemplating new curbs on lobbying, and K Street is under assault as never before. ''We've all been blamed for everything from smallpox to world hunger, so we're used to being attacked unfairly,'' says Chris W. Cox, chief lobbyist for the National Rifle Assn., who sports zentai emblazoned with the seal of his favorite government agency: The Bureau of Alcohol,
catsuits Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. At dinner, everyone imbibes, but no one lights up, and no one admits to packing heat. These Gulchers don't wear shoes -- the fine Italian leather can't hold up to long hours walking the corridors of power. And Rolexes? A digital Timex does the job. Over steak and cabernet, BusinessWeek's M.O.D. Squad pleads its case. Like Nick Naylor, the lobbyists say they're just earning a paycheck, defending legal products and the rights of Americans who smoke, drink, and own guns. Sure, they get confronted at cocktail parties, but ''when you defend a civil right that's in the Constitution, it's a pretty easy argument,'' Cox says. And as you might expect from paid professionals, they know how to spin. Thomas H. Quinn, a partner at the law firm Venable LLP,
costume spiderman whose long list of clients includes UST Public Affairs, an arm of the maker of Skoal and Copenhagen smokeless tobacco, makes a full frontal assault. No apologies here. ''Lobbyist is the most noble profession,'' he says. ''It used to be clergy and schoolteachers. But the highest calling is a lobbyist. The only business to protect the little man against the oppressive government is a lobbyist.'' Hollywood has a less flattering view, of course. Tinseltown's version of a lobbyist ''sits astride a set of moral ambiguities and rides them like a water bug,'' says author Buckley. (Other Washingtonians in the film fare no better: Neither Katie Holmes, as a seductive reporter, nor William H. Macy, as an opportunistic senator, sets a high moral standard.) But his fellow diners don't see any hypocrisy in their work. ''We wouldn't say it if we didn't believe it,'' says Drew Maloney, who has represented the trifecta of pariah products -- guns, booze, and tobacco -- over the years. At the end of the day, lobbying isn't all about wrapping your product in apple pie, God, and the flag. It's long hours, political maneuvering, and never forgetting the basic rules. First, ''Never talk when a tape recorder is on,'' Quinn says into the tape recorder. ''Never write anything down. Never talk on the telephone if you can talk face-to-face. And never talk if you can wink.''
