Mickey Goes to Washington

Leaders ofthe Discover America Partnership lobbying effort -- Jay Rasulo of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, Stevan Porter of Inter-Continental Hotels Group and Jonathan Tisch of Loews Hotels -- at an event designed to persuade the federal government to fund a $200 million tourism marketing campaign. (Jay L. Clendenin - )

Indeed, government advertising, Porter warned, "was a non-starter," at least on its own. "For many of us, we don't see that as the role of government," he said. From the start, he recommended adding two smaller proposals that were more fundamental to what government does and that would be easier to accomplish: easing the visa requirements for visitors to the United States and making customs checkpoints at airports friendlier places. Both were already under consideration by the Bush administration.

Freeman readily agreed. The goal in the coming months, the lobbyists said, was to get the machine up and running well enough to eventually get to the Ask -- the $200 million advertising and marketing program. Anything that brazen required extra cover.

In August 2006, Freeman went public with his intentions -- sans the Ask -- in a classic one-pager, the basic mode of communication of Washington lobbyists. Unless it can be written on a single, typewritten page, lobbyists say, the message is too complicated to get far in Congress.

Freeman wrote that the partnership would "run an intensive, political-style campaign" that:

¿ "Educates policymakers and opinion leaders on the power of travel and the American people."

¿ "Highlights the unnecessary obstacles to welcoming more international visitors to the U.S."

¿ "Determines how we can better compete for international visitors."

He hired Oxford Economics, a British research firm, to study what other countries were spending on tourism promotion. RT Strategies -- a Washington polling firm whose clients included Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) -- was retained to survey international travelers to see if their visits to the United States made them think more highly of the country. BKSH & Associates, a Washington lobbying firm, was asked to put together options for how the federal government might foot the bill for the advertising without causing lawmakers to scatter in panic. And Fleishman-Hillard, a Washington public relations firm, would handle the media. Together, the team set out to make the industry look unselfish, even as it prepared to beg for government aid. The lobbyists offered up two basic arguments. One was an old standby: that boosting tourism would be a boon to the U.S. economy. Almost every lobbying campaign asserts that it wants to "create jobs." Second, the partnership was determined to show that tourism was actually an adjunct to U.S. diplomacy.

The Iraq war had seriously damaged America's image abroad, particularly in Europe. Getting more people to come here from overseas and see how nice Americans are in person would reverse those ill feelings, the partnership contended. The partnership even adopted a term for this jujitsu -- public diplomacy.

Freeman provided the consultants a to-do list with 76 items, all with deadlines for completion. Examples of questions to be answered: "What could various increases in U.S. travel do by congressional district (jobs, wages, etc.)?" "What impact does travel and tourism have on other industries?" Fleishman-Hillard pitched journalists to write about the travel industry's woes and what the partnership was trying to do about them. "Here's the hook," read one pitch to a reporter. "America's image abroad is in free fall -- and the travel industry is now pressing the Administration to adopt a counter-intuitive approach to improving (or at least mitigating) America's image problem: i.e. that the best way to improve America's image abroad (and, relatedly, its level of security) is by allowing more (not fewer) foreigners to visit the U.S."

On a hot, cloudy morning in September 2006, members of the lobbying team met in a conference room at the Travel Industry Association to begin work on a lengthy blueprint to convince lawmakers that change was needed. The association's building, on New York Avenue NW, was, appropriately, a converted Greyhound Bus Line terminal. "We will make a full-on charge toward public diplomacy," Freeman said. But until that message was accepted as true, he said, the time would not be right to seek a publicly funded advertising budget. "If we went ahead with our core Ask today," he said, "we'd run into a brick wall."

"You also have this debate on Fortress America going on," one of the consultants pointed out, warning that the immigration controversy was pushing Congress to erect more barriers to entry, not fewer.