port of the most transaction-oriented of goals-winning a vote. No company can afford to ignore a pa- rade outside its window, but it shouldn't follow the example of some politicians who confuse running for office with holding of- fice. Public relations is about building and nurturing long-term relationships. Public trust is more important than any short-term political gain. Capitol Hill The witness table, covered in humble green felt, looked insignificant under the high ceiling and before the two-tiered mahogany dais of the Senate Hearing Room. Other men might have been intimidated, but Mike Armstrong bounded into the room and smiled broadly as he took his seat before the Antitrust, Business Rights, and Competition Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee on July 7, 1998. The subcommittee had scheduled a hearing on "technological convergence" weeks before AT&T announced its merger with TCI, and the com- pany's lobbyists had jumped at the chance to testify before a friendly committee that was relatively unprepared to ask probing questions. Armstrong's testimony that day was directed not only at forestall- ing objections to the TCI merger, but also at an even more significant Tough Calls issue: holding the Bell companies' feet to the fire to open their local markets. As expected, within twenty-four hours of the merger an- nouncement, every Bell company had issued a statement calling for its immediate release from the requirements of the Telecom Act. They were not alone in seeking to leverage the merger announcement for their own purposes. Consumer groups wanted cable rates rolled back, frozen, or re-regulated. The National Association of Broadcasters wanted the FCC to require the merged company to carry local TV stations' high-definition digital signals. AT&T's unions saw the merger as a side door into the notoriously antiunion cable industry. America Online saw it as a way to gain access to the merged com- pany's cable lines. Many of these issues would be argued not only at the Department of Justice and the 