Ethics: Is Washington in Japan's Pocket?

A controversial new book challenges the way former top officials lobby for foreign interests, but fails to plumb the dilemma of patriotism in a global economy

Washington is a city of midlife compromises. Bright-eyed young men and women flock to the capital, as they have since the New Deal, not because they want to make money but because they want to act on their political beliefs. They enter government; they master a specialty; they amass a Rolodex. Then maybe their party loses power or they find themselves lusting after a BMW on a bureaucrat's salary. Suddenly the former idealists are in the private sector, bartering what they learned in government in their new roles as lawyers, lobbyists, public relations consultants or (to use an old-fashioned term) influence...

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