Since yesterday afternoon, about 300 people have reached this site after searching on Google for the words “Nabokov” and “heroine.” They are reaching an old post of mine about Lolita. I can’t find any website that links to that post; all the visitors are coming straight off Google. Their IP addresses indicate that they live all over the English-speaking world, from Cape Town to California. Something must be prompting interest in this combination of two words; my wife suggests it’s a crossword puzzle clue.

I often receive visitors looking for “Lolita,” thanks to my article on Nabokov and various posts about him. I don’t think most of these visitors are expecting to find what I provide. No pictures or videos here, just a stern reminder that Dolores Haze, Nabokov’s great heroine, is an orphan child taken prisoner and raped by a middle-aged pervert. There is no evidence whatsoever that she wants to have sex with Humbert Humbert, but plenty of signs that he physically abuses her. She is remarkably resilient; Nabokov once said that he admired her more than any of his creations. It is amazing that this scion of the Russian aristocracy, educated at Cambridge, multilingual and erudite, could have made a gum-popping suburban American “tween” into his tragic heroine. Stereotypes dissolved in Nabokov’s acute and humane vision.

[8/17/2009: Several people have emailed to confirm that the occasional popularity of this post is due to crossword puzzle clues that seem to pop up in different newspapers every few months. By the way, if you need a Nabokov heroine with a three-letter name, try “Ada.”]

According to David K. Kirkpatrick in The New York Times, “The new law [on ethics and lobbying that awaits President Bush’s signature] has quickly sent a ripple of fear through K Street. … ‘They might as well just pull up the paddy wagon outside the Capital Grille,’ one lobbyist said, referring to a clubby steakhouse near the Capitol that is a well-known K Street hangout.”

We shouldn’t hate or hound lobbyists. “Lobbying” means professionally petitioning the government, which is an explicit First Amendment right. I was a registered federal lobbyist myself (for Common Cause in the early 1990s), and I’m rather proud of that record.

Common Cause spent no money at all to benefit politicians: not even snacks that might cost pennies. We were Puritans in Gomorrah. At its best, lobbying is simply an exchange of ideas and information. But I don’t think it ever can be only that. There must be an interface between the public sector and the organized private sector (businesses and associations). The latter will always use money to influence the former. Walling policy off from money is like separating love, sex, or religion from commerce–never entirely successful.

But that doesn’t mean that any rules are as good as any others. In fact, we need reforms that go much deeper than the new ethics law. The obstacle to fundamental reform is political. Organized special interests benefit from being able to use money to influence policy. All incumbent lawmakers have some interest in preserving the status quo. The public dislikes money in politics, but this is a classic issue that pits very diffused, abstract public interests against tangible private interests. It’s no contest.

Our best chance is to preserve and strengthen the moral norm that money isn’t proper in politics. Love is not prostitution, the temple is not the marketplace, and lawmaking is not a business exchange. It is, or ought to be, shameful to mix any of these things.

Unfortunately, norms are fragile. When, for example, Mitt Romney chose to launch his presidential campaign before a symbolic backdrop of 400 fundraisers dialing for dollars, he flaunted–and threatened to destroy–the norm that money and government don’t mix. It was like an aristocrat bragging that he has bought his title; if he gets away with it, there is no more aristocracy. The same could easily happen to the spirit of republican government and rule of law.

This is why the new ethics law is important. It makes people uncomfortable about paying for influence. It makes money in politics seem shameful, or at least shady. It therefore preserves the ethic of republican government.

According to Kirkpatrick, some lobbyists are afraid of unjust prosecution. For example, under the new law, a lobbyist could be criminally liable if his employee failed to disclose something of value that he had given to legislative staff. I don’t want people to be unjustly prosecuted. But the tensions and fears that lobbyists are feeling right now result from the fundamental tension between the rules of a market and the rules of democratic government. A better solution would be more radical reform–for example, public financing of political campaigns. Perhaps the only way to achieve such a reform is to make explicit the moral tensions that currently arise at the border between the market and the government, to burden lobbyists with rules and prosecute them for violations; in short, to make them symbols of our deeper problems.

Michael Hill wrote a profile of me in Sunday’s Baltimore Sun. He gave me quite a lot of space to talk about my usual obsessions: public participation, civil society, youth, and so on. His biographical sketch probably makes my life seem more coherent and “purpose-driven” than it has actually been–but I guess I led him to that. Hill is an interesting reporter, in any case, who has written several previous pieces about the public’s role in politics in which he quotes Matthew Crenson and Benjamin Ginsberg (authors of Downsizing Democracy), Harry Boyte, and others.

The Michigan State House is considering a bill to allow citizens aged 17 at the time of a primary to vote if they will turn 18 on or before the general election. (To be more precise, the bill would put that proposal before the voters as a constitutional amendment.) I’m generally in favor of lowering the voting age by a year or so, because then students will become eligible to vote while they are still in high school, and voting can become part of the curriculum. They can learn the mechanics of registering and casting a ballot and also discuss issues in a moderated forum (the social studies classroom).

Eric Plutzer and others have found that voting is habitual–once someone casts a first vote, typically she continues to participate for decades. Consequently, lowering the voting age could be a way of increasing turnout, if the election became an opportunity for some basic voter education.

This is an argument for enfranchising all 17-year-olds. The Michigan proposal is more complicated and less inclusive that what I would favor, but it reflects an intuition that people who are going to be allowed to vote in a given election ought to be able to participate in the primary, as well. The bill would be a modest change, but better than nothing.

I’m in a day-long meeting, without a lot of time to ruminate and write, but this is a good chance to link to an ambitious new website: TerpImpact. It’s a portal for students at the University of Maryland who might be interested in becoming more civically engaged (in various ways). It not only offers opportunities for volunteering and political action, but also provides intellectually stimulating material about civic engagement and learning. I think this is a model for higher education.