Overview

""Michael Pertschuk brings an insider's insight to the tumultuous years of the sixties and seventies, when the consumer protection bells rang from Washington throughout the land. An engrossing story of corporate versus consumer battles over health, safety, and the economic rights of Americans. The future of consumer justice is given wisdom by this eyewitness account.""--Ralph Nadar ""This is a book that should be ready by everyone with a stake in regulation of business by bureaucrats in Washington. Whether you agree or disagree with his point of view--and I often disagree--you can always count on Mike Pertschuk to be provocative, stimulating, and certainly controversial.""--Howard H. Bell, President, American Advertising Federation ""There is a lot of businessmen [sic] to disagree with in this book. It's troublesome and disturbing--not the least because Mike Pertschuk is a tough adversary. But any businessman [sic]--or citizen--who wants to know exactly how the politics of regulation work would be well advised to read this book--and be prepared.""--George Koch, President and Chief Executive Officer Grocery Manufacturers of America ""Must reading for everyone who is a student of the consumer movement, past, present, and future, and its interaction with the government, media, private sector, et al. It is a superb 'How To' manual on tactics, and presents a rare inside look at how things really get done in that place called Washington, D.C.""--Calvin Pond, Vice President, Public Affairs Division Safeway Stores, Inc. ""Pertschuk's book is outstanding; it is a beautiful blend of personal, firsthand observation and political and policy analysis.""--Aaron Wildavsky, University of California, Berkeley ""A rare picture of how government works. . . sprightly, lucid, and appealing . . .remarkably candid and honest, not only in revealing the labyrinthian interplays of politics but in disclosing the author's own attitudes and motives. . . . An extraordinary document.""--Charles Lindblom, Yale University ""There is no more controversial figure in Washington than Michael Pertschuk . . .""--Senator John Danforth

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9780520050747

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How did the consumer impulse of the 1960s and early '70s succumb to the anti-regulatory fervor of recent years? What had we accomplished? Where had we gone wrong? As staff director of the Senate Commerce Committee, Pertschuk launched one after another consumer-protection law; as the Carter-appointed chairman of the Federal Trade Commission ( the fulfillment of an adult fantasy ), he had to fight to keep the agency alive. Here he offers a wry and rousing appraisal of that dramatic reversal - and of the prospects for consumerism today. His major point, articulated and demonstrated, is an amalgam of the thinking of James Q. Wilson (The Politics of Regulation) and Charles E. Lindblom (Politics and Markets): under certain conditions, public-interest entrepreneurs can mobilize latent sentiment for remedial, business-curbing legislation (Wilson) but business influence on government decision-making will ultimately prevail (Lindblum). So we see, in the prosperous, anti-Establishment mid-'60s, zealous young Committee staffers evoke public outrage over flammable children's clothing (pointed out to Comm. chairman Magnuson by a pediatrician-constituent) and channel that outrage into a demand for Congress to strengthen the flammable fabrics law. We see the moment, in the faltering mid-'70s, at which business took fright ( You touched the money nerve, said a Chamber of Commerce rep); mobilized in turn (the PACs); and, given new respectability by the free-enterprise economists, found a public voice. And later we see the crestfallen FTC reaction to being tagged - in the Washington Post! - the National Nanny (because of its proposed constraints on children's TV advertising) and how the depleted, chastened public-interest entrepreneurs regrouped. Early and late, Pertschuk shrewdly and appreciatively weighs the impact of Ralph Nader - as an Old Testament prophet or Sherman-marching-through-Georgia. A buoyant and pithy book on one of the world's less glittering subjects. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Michael Pertschuk is a consumer and public health advocate and former Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission.

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