Vermont’s campaign finance law (with its stringent limits on both political contributions and campaign spending) faced tough questions at the Supreme Court on Tuesday. Vermont argued that the limits are necessary to combat corruption–specifically, a pattern of buying access to politicians. But Justice Kennedy said: “Let’s assume that some members of the court simply accept the proposition that money buys access … It’s a common-sense conclusion. I tend to think that money does buy access. But what follows from that? … Isn’t the answer that voters can see what’s going on and throw the incumbents out?”

One response: We already have access to vast amounts of campaign finance data: more than anyone can take in. Challengers as well as incumbents accept money from interested parties with whom they meet privately. Disclosure doesn’t give citizens enough recourse, because both sides in any serious race take money.

There’s also a deeper problem, going to the heart of what legitimizes a democracy. Assume that publicly disclosed campaign finance reports influence some voters. Then incumbents face pressure not to appear to do favors for their own donors. But they must also raise money, so they face pressure to do what potential donors want. At the very least, those politicians whose genuine views align with the interests of big donors have an advantage in elections. “Pluralist” political scientists have long argued that money doesn’t simply purchase political influence; the market is more complicated. Donors have influence on politicians, but politicians have a choice about their donors; and voters and membership groups also make decisions. Multivariate models tend to show that campaign money itself has a small impact, once you control for other factors, such as candidates’ ideologies and constituents.

But the “pluralist” view of politics is fundamentally flawed. It legitimizes pressure from moneyed interest groups as long as other pressures counteract it. But money should have no impact at all; it’s an illegitimate form of political power, even if it isn’t decisive. Moreover, voters shouldn’t have to rely on elaborate models to prove that money does not actually cause legislative responses, even though lobbyists who give money seem to get better legislation. It is unreasonable to expect people to trust a market-like system of politics when the fundamental ethic of democracy is not the ethic of a market. A representative democracy isn’t legitimate when various interest groups and voters are in equilibrium and no one is able to purchase excessive influence. It is legitimate when the arguments that legislators make in public are their actual reasons, and financial pressure is absent.

(I made this case at more length in a 1997 article, which later expanded into a chapter of my book on the New Progressive Era. See also this post, where I emphasize the inequality caused by campaign donations. Incidentally, I do not recommend Vermont’s approach as the best public policy: stringent contribution limitations can restrict speech and favor incumbents. Public subsidies for campaigning are better.)

“We must stop the obesity epidemic.” “We need to tap the energies and talents of young people.” “We have to defeat these incumbents.” … Those are exhortations aimed at an unspecified “we.” They are very common in politics and political commentary. But I am increasingly impatient with that rhetorical style. It begs the critical questions: Who has a reason to, or an interest in, making the proposed change? How are such people organized? What assets do they have? What strategies or incentives would make them act in favor of the recommendation?

Here’s a paradox: We need to drop the hortatory “we” and start thinking more strategically.

Over the President’s Day weekend, my family and I visited the Bahamas. I have hesitated to blog about our trip, because I don’t want to presume any knowledge or insight about a country that I saw so briefly. I find life in America mysterious and complicated enough; to say something about a foreign nation on the basis (mainly) of a two-hour tour provided by a friendly taxi driver is presumptuous.

But I enjoy recording what I happen to notice. In Miami, on the way home, I saw scores of homeless men under a kind of portico in a blighted downtown district. Back in our own neighborhood in Washington, someone asked me for money for food. I didn’t see anyone that badly off in Nassau. There were some very small houses–maybe 10 feet by 10 feet. But they were mixed in with larger homes and shops. People of all ages seemed comfortable out on the streets. There may be crime, but there was no sign of fear. Our taxi driver emphasized that health care is free except for a $10 co-pay if you stay overnight at the hospital.

I don’t want to romanticize life in a place that, to repeat, I know so little. But it turns out that the adult literacy rate in the Bahamas is 95.5%, life expectancy at birth is 67.2, 97% of the population has access to water and up to 94% can afford essential drugs. There are 106 physicians per 100,000 population. Women hold 20% of seats in parliament and are slightly more literate than men, although their earned income is only 64% of men’s. By way of comparison, life expectancy in the US is 78 years, 100% of our population is considered to have access to safe water, and there are about 549 physicians per 100,000 people (but a lot of people can’t afford to see them). I can’t find adult literacy statistics for the US or the percentage of Americans who can afford drugs defined as essential–I doubt that either rate is higher than in the Bahamas. Women hold 15.1% of the seats in Congress and earn 62% as much income as men.

It occurs to me that if the 192 countries of the world were people, the US would be one of the richest, but would have some “issues.” The Bahamas would be upper-middle class and would have its act together pretty well.

Phillip Larkin, the great English poet, once said, “Until I grew up I thought I hated everybody, but when I grew up I realized it was just children I didn’t like. Once you started meeting grown-ups life was much pleasanter. Children are very horrible, aren’t they. Selfish, noisy, cruel, vulgar little brutes.”

In reading anything by Larkin, you have to make allowances for a combative, hostile stance toward women, immigrants, animals, and children. This is a stance, and its main point is to communicate the narrator’s own flaws and vulnerability. He wasn’t a nice man, but he was a profound ironist. He didn’t exactly mean what he wrote.

Nevertheless, I think Larkin had a point in the passage quoted above–not about all kids, but about children who are raised the way his generation was in middle-class, provincial England ca. 1930. If you leave children alone to create their own social world and to interact freely with one another, they can indeed be selfish and cruel. In the society of Larkin’s youth, discipline was strict (sometimes even brutal), but adults didn’t interfere much in children’s social world. They punished kids for playing dangerously or for annoying or inconveniencing grown-ups, not for being mean to one another. In fact, adults’ strictness tended to drive children into a separate world in which the stronger kids dominated. Left completely to their own devices, children will make Lord of the Flies.

But of course you can interfere to make children kind and fair to one another. Or you can integrate kids into families and adult communities so that they don’t have a fully autonomous social world. There is a lot of variation in the degree to which children and adolescents are allowed to form autonomous youth cultures. I think less autonomy is generally better.

(This position has implications for the way we organize schools. In particular, it means that we should try to make schools smaller and connect them to adult institutions instead of isolating them behind big lawns or barred windows.)

Since my family and I are traveling, I don’t expect to post anything until Tuesday. Meanwhile, I’m flattered that this blog has been nominated for the Koufax Award in the “best expert blog” category. Voting hasn’t started yet, but please consider voting for me when the polls open. Some of the other nominees attract easily 100 times as much daily traffic as I do, so I’m going to be buried. But I’d love to get at least a few votes.