Lexington
列克星敦
The class warrior
阶级勇士
Jun 19th 2008
From The Economist print edition
Jim Webb would make a poor running-mate for Barack Obama
对于巴拉克奥巴马而言，吉姆韦伯并非一位理想的竞选搭档。
IN 1983 Jim Webb spent a while working as a journalist in Lebanon. “On any given day in Beirut, one never knew who was going to shoot at whom, or for what reason,” he recalls in his new book, “A Time to Fight”. During a typical skirmish he observed, Lebanese army soldiers started shooting at some Druze militiamen, who responded by firing on American marines (who were supposed to be keeping the peace). Then a Syrian unit let rip its heavy machineguns at both the marines and the Lebanese. Meanwhile, in the distance, Christian Phalangist militiamen “engaged in an artillery duel with another unit that we were unable to identify.”
1983年，吉姆韦伯（Jim Webb）在黎巴嫩干过一段时间的记者。”在贝鲁特，随便哪一天，你绝对不知道谁将向谁开枪，也不知晓究竟为何。”在他的新书《战争在即》中他回想起这些往事。他经常看到这样的冲突：开始的时候是黎巴嫩士兵向德鲁兹教派民兵开枪，后者做出的反应则是向美国海军陆战队开火（他们应该是在执行维和任务）。随后一只叙利亚部队用重型机关枪向海军陆战队和黎巴嫩人猛烈扫射。与此同时，在远处，黎巴嫩右翼基督教民兵”正在和一只不明身份的部队展开一场火炮决斗。”
Mr Webb’s experiences in Beirut (where 241 Americans were killed in a suicide attack that year) convinced him that America should never occupy territory in the Middle East. When the idea of invading Iraq was first mooted, he opposed it. He predicted America would get stuck there for 30-50 years, that Muslims everywhere would be outraged and that Chinese and Iranian influence in the region would increase at America’s expense.
贝鲁特的经历（那年有241名美国人死于一场自杀式袭击）使韦伯相信美国绝不应该在中东占据领土。当入侵伊拉克的想法刚刚浮出水面之际，他就表示强烈反对。他预计美军将深陷伊拉克，三五十年动弹不得，世界各地的穆斯林会义愤填膺，同仇敌忾。他还预计中国和伊朗在该地区的影响力会得以提升，而美国的影响力将因此受损。
In his prescience on this issue, Mr Webb, who is now a senator, has much in common with Barack Obama. The difference is that Mr Webb is a military man. He attended the Naval Academy (also John McCain’s alma mater), was decorated four times and wounded twice in Vietnam, and served as Ronald Reagan’s secretary of the navy. His father was in the air force; his son served in Iraq. No one, therefore, can accuse Mr Webb of being an effete peacenik. That lends weight to his views on Iraq, and leads many Democrats to conclude that Mr Obama should pick him as his running mate.
如今已是参议员的韦伯在此议题上的先知先觉使得他在许多方面与巴拉克奥巴马很类似。区别在于韦伯是一名军人。他上过美国海军军官学校（这也是约翰麦凯恩的母校），曾经四次被授勋嘉奖，在越南时曾两度受伤，他还担任过里根政府的海军部长。他的父亲当过空军;他的儿子在伊拉克服过兵役。因此，没有人能指责韦伯是一位没有血性的反战分子。这使得他对伊拉克战争的观点愈发显得分量十足，也让许多的民主党人断定奥巴马应该挑选他作为竞选搭档。
In some ways, Mr Webb would be a shrewd choice. He is from Virginia, a battleground state with 13 juicy electoral votes. At 62, he is reassuringly older than Mr Obama, but he has been a politician for less than two years, which fits nicely with Mr Obama’s message of freshness and change. Among party activists he is a hero, since his white-knuckle victory in 2006 handed control of the Senate to the Democrats. And he compensates for some of Mr Obama’s weaknesses. Unlike his party’s flag-bearer, Mr Webb understands America’s warrior culture. He also has solid experience both of grappling with bureaucrats and of running something big: the entire navy and marine corps.
在许多方面，挑选韦伯都称得上是精明之举。他来自维吉尼亚州，这可是大选时的必争之地，该州拥有13张令人垂涎的选举人票。他今年62岁，比奥巴马要年长，这一点令人安心。然而他从政不到两年，这与奥巴马想要传达的”新鲜””变革”的信息甚是吻合。在党内的政治活动家眼中他是一位英雄，原因就是他在 2006年一场令人极度紧张的选举中获得胜利，从而使民主党获得参议院控制权。而且他还可以弥补奥巴马的一些弱点。与党内的执旗者不同，韦伯参透美国的勇士文化。在应对官僚以及运营大事务方面（整个海军和海军陆战队）他也有坚实的经验。
Mr Obama is a scholarly and cosmopolitan chap who has so far struggled to connect with working-class whites. During the primaries, he lost in West Virginia to Hillary Clinton by a staggering 41 percentage points. Mr Webb, though also a successful writer, is a gruff warrior who glories in his humble southern roots. His mother grew up sleeping on a corn-shuck mattress and brushing her teeth with twigs. His uncle Tommy once took on three men together in a brawl. Other Democrats may talk about thumping Republicans; Mr Webb has punched Oliver North repeatedly in the face. (During a boxing match at the Naval Academy which, to be fair, Mr North won.)
奥巴马是一位具有学者风范和大都会气质的毛头小伙，一直以来他竭力和工人阶级白人拉关系。在初选期间他以令人难以置信的41个百分点的差距在西维吉尼亚负于希拉里克林顿。虽然韦伯也是一位很有成就的作家，但他同时是一位性情恶劣的勇士，他对自己卑微的南部出身甚是得意。他的母亲自小就睡在谷壳做的床垫上，刷牙用的是细树枝。他的叔叔汤米有一次和人打架，竟然以一敌三。其他的民主党人或许叫嚷着要重击共和党人，而韦伯曾对准奥利弗诺斯（Oliver North） 的脸部不断地用拳猛击。（说句公道话，在海军军官学校的一次拳击比赛中，诺斯胜出。）（译者注：Oliver North是当年伊朗门的主角，里根总统的替罪羊，为民主人所憎恨。）
Mr Obama enjoys huge support among blacks and rich white liberals. That was enough to win him the Democratic nomination. But to win the general election, he needs Reagan Democrats-working-class whites who worry about national security, are somewhat culturally conservative and whom the Gipper was able to persuade to change political sides. These folks might well prefer a plain-spoken war hero like Mr McCain to the articulate and arugula-munching Mr Obama. But they would vote for Mr Obama if he ran with another plain-spoken warrior, especially if that warrior questions the ban on school prayer and has a union card, two Purple Hearts and three tattoos.
奥巴马受到黑人和富裕的白人自由主义者的广泛支持，这足以使他赢得民主党提名。但是要想赢得大选，他还需要”里根民主党人'”的支持,也就是那些担忧国家安全，在文化倾向上有点保守的工人阶级白人，当年里根能够劝说他们改变政治立场。与口若悬河，整日咀嚼芝麻菜的奥巴马相比，这些人很可能更钟情像麦凯恩这样说话直截了当的战斗英雄。但是如果奥巴马的竞选搭档也是一位言语坦率的勇士，而且这位勇士对禁止在学校祈祷提出质疑，还是一位拥有两枚紫心勋章的工会成员，身上还刺有三处纹身的话，他们或许会投票支持奥巴马。（译者注：这里的arugula-munching 是暗讽奥巴马脱离群众的精英倾向。）
That, at least, is what Mr Webb’s boosters argue. No one but Mr Obama knows whom he will pick, but the buzz around Mr Webb is loud enough to make him the favourite on Intrade, a betting website. So it is worth examining his weaknesses, too.
至少韦伯的支持者们如是声辩。除了奥巴马之外没有人知道他会挑选谁。但是围绕韦伯的议论之声越来越大，使得他已成为一家名曰Intrade的博彩网站的热门人选。因此我们也有必要审视一下他的弱点。
On the other hand
凡事皆有两面
Mr Webb is an indifferent campaigner. His speeches are awkward, he clearly dislikes all the flesh-pressing and he looks like an angry potato. He has infuriated some Democrats (but pleased others) by bucking party orthodoxy on matters of race and sex. He thinks it unfair to poor whites that racial preferences designed to atone for slavery and segregation should be extended to virtually every other minority group. And in 1979 he wrote an article opposing combat roles for women entitled, simply: “Women Can’t Fight”. (He has since changed his mind.)
韦伯是一位平庸的竞选者。他的演讲令人尴尬，很明显他不喜欢那种大范围的握手场面，他看起来就像是一个愤怒的土豆。在种族和性别的议题上他反对党内的正统观点，惹怒了许多民主党人（当时也让其他人很是欢喜。）他认为对于贫穷的白人而言，那种将旨在补偿奴隶制和种族隔离政策过失的种族优先政策扩展到几乎其他所有少数族裔的做法是极其不公的。在1979年，他写过一篇反对女子参加战斗的文章，题目简单明了：”女人不能打仗”。（自那以后他改变了想法。）
The main worry about Mr Webb, however, is that he is a genuine fire-breathing economic populist. He appears actually to believe the sort of stuff that Mr Obama only says during Democratic primaries. Since vice-presidents sometimes become presidents, this matters. American workers, says Mr Webb, “are at the mercy of cut-throat executives who are vastly overpaid, partly as a consequence of giving [the workers’] jobs away to other people.” Illegal immigration and globalisation “threaten to dissipate” the American middle-class way of life. He predicts that, unless the government acts to restore “economic fairness”, America “may well go the way of ancient Greece [or] greed-ridden Rome”.
然而韦伯让人最担忧的则是他是一位彻头彻尾的极具攻击性的经济民粹主义者。他似乎真的相信奥巴马只是在初选时说的那套东西。由于副总统有时也会成为总统，兹事体大。韦伯说：”如今的美国工人任由那些薪水极高的高管摆布，造成这种情况的部分原因是工人们的就业机会被赠与他人。”非法移民和全球化 “威胁驱散” 美国中产阶级的生活方式。他预计，除非政府采取措施重塑”经济公平”，否则的话，美国很可能重蹈古希腊抑或深受贪婪之累的罗马之覆辙。
America may be horribly unequal, but it is not, as Mr Webb imagines, apocalyptically so. And judging by his book, Mr Webb has only a shaky understanding of the economic system he decries. He thinks South Korea is more productive than America, and that “most” investors are among the wealthiest 1% of Americans. (In fact, about half of Americans own shares.) He is worryingly hazy about how he would make America fairer. But his instincts are plainly hostile to the free flow of goods, investment and people across borders. Mr Obama, who has recently started to sound less protectionist on the campaign trail and has appointed a team of impeccably centrist economic advisers, can surely do a bit better.
美国社会或许严重不公，但是它还没有如韦伯所想象的那样到了世界末日。根据他的书来判断，韦伯对其所谴责的经济体制的理解程度也只能说是模棱两可。他认为韩国的生产率要比美国高，”绝大多数”投资者都来自美国人当中最富裕的1%.(事实上，大约一半的美国人拥有股票。)令人忧虑的是他并不清楚他怎样才能让美国变得更公平些。然而他本能上显然对于货物，投资以及人员的跨国自由流动怀有敌意。最近在竞选活动中奥巴马的言辞听起来少了些保护主义的色彩，而且他最近任命了一组在经济事务上绝对是倾向中间路线的顾问团队。想必他或许会表现的好一些。
译者：kevin.Ren http://www.ecocn.org/forum/viewthread.php?tid=12214&extra=page%3D1