And unlike the daily affairs of the White House, which have inherent dramatic value, lobbying and consulting tend to be as opaque as the language in a legislative rider or as dull as the opening statements at an appropriations meeting.
The National Deaf Children's Society had been lobbying to protect the value of DLA payments.
A powerful "family values" lobby with support in Parliament is pushing for a ban on pornography on television.
Women's groups and gay activists are squaring up against opponents from the "family values" lobby over the contents of two very different television adverts that are due to air when the New Orleans Saints take on the Indianapolis Colts in next Sunday's finale of the American football season.
Mr O'Neill said Labour MPs had been lobbying the chancellor, Gordon Brown, over the high value of sterling with no success.
In a broader sense, lobbying government in legal ways to increase shareholder value is well documented.
He said that too many of his colleagues spend their time lobbying voters, going to conferences and "walking away from the true value of what restaurants are".
Culture must of course continue to lobby for its local value, and argue against cuts where they occur.
The euro is so high these days that it has even become an issue in the presidential campaign in France: Nicolas Sarkozy, the conservative candidate for president, has vowed to lobby to lower its value against the dollar if he wins the election in May.
Meanwhile, pharmaceutical reps aggressively lobbied physicians on the value of their pills, and as Dr Celine Gounder noted in the New Yorker: "By 2010, the United States, with about five per cent of the world's population, was consuming ninety-nine per cent of the world's hydrocodone".
