Hollywood meets 'K Street'

Further, televising the real work of lobbyists could make dreadful entertainment. Often the big fights are about changing a single word, sentence, or paragraph in the draft of a law. That single change can save a company, or an industry, millions of dollars. But who wants to watch the process?

"I didn't see anybody [on the show] shagging for one of the discreet little lines in an appropriations bill, or trying to get some arcane definition changed in the Medicare bill.... That would be real," says Bonnie Whyte, a lobbyist and chief operating officer for the Employers Council on Flexible Compensation in Washington.

She adds: "I can't imagine that anybody would permit that to be on camera, for a variety of reasons. If I accomplish my goal for my association, I certainly want my members to know about it, but if I don't, I sure don't want to broadcast it across America."

"There is no way they could ever show the American public how Washington really works, so much is just whispers, smoke and mirrors," says a second-generation D.C. lobbyist, who loved meeting K Street's executive producer George Clooney and doesn't want to be quoted criticizing. "What fool would participate in real time?"

Even if the Washington elite did clamor to get in front of a hand-held camera, the "reckless" mixing of fact and fiction could confuse the public, critics say. "I don't want to add a single micro-Nielson point to their ratings, and I hope people will boycott this show and all others like it that deliberately confuse fact and fiction," says Alan Tonelson, a lobbyist and trade policy analyst at the US Business and Industries Council.

But insiders agree that Episode 1 got the aesthetics of official Washington right: To play high-stakes Washington politics, it helps to look the part. Ask Washington's top tailor, Georges de Paris (his real name). The signed pictures along the wall of his discreet 14th Street shop are mainly presidents, but his big customers are lobbyists.

"Lobbyist, lobbyist, lobbyist, lobbyist, Texas lobbyist (a solid tan amid all the blue pinstripes and herringbone tweeds), lobbyist, lobbyist," says Georges de Paris, rifling through the hand-basted, cashmere suits-in-process on his fitting rack. "If you dress well, people respect you.... You get more customers," he says.

One of his fabrics, a tight-weave Saville Row vicuna, runs $1,300 a yard. He just delivered such a suit to a New York-based lobbyist. "Politicians don't want to spend the money."

"A very successful lobbyist gets paid very well, and ... perception is reality. People need to look the part," says Jim Albertine, former president of the American League of Lobbyists and head of Albertine Enterprises, Inc., a Washington lobby shop.

He didn't catch Episode 1, but says he would be open to an audition call.

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