[2008.07.12] 莱克星顿：焕然一新的奥巴马

Lexington
莱克星顿

New and improved
焕然一新的奥巴马

Jul 10th 2008 2008年7月10日
From The Economist print edition

The only problem with Barack Obama’s move to the centre is that he’s not moving far enough
巴拉克•奥巴马转向中间路线的唯一问题在于他做得还不够。

THE reaction to Jesse Helms’s death on July 4th is a reminder of how bipolar American politics has become. The right praised him as a man of principle who also overflowed with the milk of human kindness. The left retorted-rightly, in our view-that he was also a bigot and a bully (see article). But at least conservatives and liberals have discovered one thing they can agree on: that Barack Obama is a cynical opportunist, a flip-flopper and a shape-changer, a man who brushes aside his principles with the same nonchalance that lesser mortals reserve for their dandruff.

7月4日耶西•赫尔姆斯（Jesse Helms）去世的消息引发的反应提醒着人们美国政治的两极对抗已变得多么严重。右派称赞他是一位充盈着人性之善的正直之士。左派反驳说（在我们看来有其道理）他还是一位偏执狂，是一位恶棍。然而至少保守主义者和自由主义者已经发现他们能在一件事情上达成共识：即巴拉克•奥巴马是一位愤世嫉俗的机会主义分子，其立场时常左右摇摆，仿若一只变色龙，这是一位无视原则的人物，那种若无其事的态度犹如下等人对待身上的头皮屑。

Bob Herbert of the New York Times worries that Mr Obama is “not just tacking gently to the centre. He’s lurching right when it suits him, and he’s zigging with the kind of reckless abandon that’s guaranteed to cause disillusion, if not whiplash.” Some 22,000 people have protested on his website about his change of heart on wiretapping. A group called “Recreate68” promises to complain about his move to the centre at the Democratic convention in Denver in August.

《纽约时报》的鲍勃•赫伯特（Bob Herbert）担心奥巴马”不仅仅缓缓地向中间路线转变，而且在情形合意之际他还会向右翼潜行，他如此毫无节制地左右摇摆注定会使人对他的幻想破灭，如果不是对他口诛笔伐的话。”大约有2万2千人在他的网站上抗议他在窃听这一议题上改变立场。有一个名曰”再现68″的团体许诺说要在8月份在丹佛举行的民主党全国大会上就其向中间路线转变之举开展抗议活动。

For its part, the right has discovered that Mr Obama is not a “hard left” liberal, as it had previously thought, but a standard-issue politician who will “say and do anything to get elected”. Charles Krauthammer calls him a “man of seasonal principles”. Bo Snerdley, Rush Limbaugh’s sidekick, describes him as “the first black Clinton”. “Has there ever in recent political memory been so much calculation and bad faith by a politician who has made so much of eschewing both?”, asks Rich Lowry, the editor of the National Review.

就右派而言，他们现在发现奥巴马并非像他们原先认为得那样，是一位”坚定的左翼”自由主义分子，而是一位”为了当选什么话都敢说，什么事都敢干”的普普通通的政客。查尔斯•克劳萨默（Charles Krauthammer）认为他的立场”会随着季节变化而变化”。 鲁什•林堡（Rush Limbaugh）的助手Bo Snerdley 将他描述为”首位长着黑皮肤的克林顿”。” 在最近的政治记忆中有没有哪一位政客曾如此信誓旦旦，说要规避政治伎俩，说要坚守信念，而又如此地精于算计，如此地不守信义？”《国民评论》的编辑里奇• 劳瑞（Rich Lowry）如是问道。

This is all overstated. Mr Obama was always clear that he was running for the presidency of the United States, not the chairmanship of MoveOn.org. He has repeatedly presented himself as a post-partisan problem-solver who wants to work with Republicans as well as Democrats. His enthusiasm for “faith-based” social services is long held. Even on the issue that first endeared him to the left-the Iraq war-he made it abundantly clear that he was opposed to that particular war, not to the exercise of American power. Still, there is no doubt that he has engaged in a bit of vigorous repositioning in the past few weeks.

这一切都言过其实了。一直以来奥巴马都很清楚他竞选的是美利坚合众国的总统，而不是MoveOn.org 网站的主席。他再三地将自己描述成一位能够在后党派政治中解决问题的人，他不但想和民主党人共事还想和共和党人合作。他对于”基于信仰”的社会福利事业的热情可谓长而久之。甚至在伊拉克战争，这一让他开始受到左派垂青的议题上，他的立场一直表白得明确无误：他反对的是这一场特定的战争，而不是反对行使美国的权力。然而，在过去的几周内他的立场变化得无疑有些剧烈。

The old Obama pledged to take public financing in the general election. The new one will spend what it takes. The old Obama pledged to filibuster a bill giving legal immunity to telecoms companies that co-operated with the government on terrorist surveillance. The new one supports the bill. The old Obama failed to wear a flag pin. The new Obama talks about patriotism in a sea of American flags, praises General David Petraeus, the chief commander in Iraq, raises doubts about partial-birth abortion, agrees with the Supreme Court on gun rights, supports the death penalty for child-rapists and embraces faith-based social work.

昔日的奥巴马承诺在大选时接收财政部提供的经费，如今的奥巴马要花费的是他所募集到的资金。昔日的奥巴马承诺他将阻挠给予在监视恐怖分子行动中与政府合作的电信公司司法豁免权的议案。如今的奥巴马支持此议案。昔日的奥巴马没有戴过国旗胸针。如今的奥巴马在一片美国国旗的海洋之中高谈阔论爱国主义，赞扬伊拉克美军最高指挥官戴维•彼得雷乌斯（David Petraeus），对晚期堕胎提出质疑，同意最高法院关于持枪权利的判决，支持对儿童强奸者实施死刑，拥护基于信仰的社会工作。

But isn’t moving to the centre just sensible politics as the primary turns into a general election? Ronald Reagan devoted a great deal of energy to persuading people that he was not a trigger-happy ideologue. Bill Clinton sold himself as a New Democrat who felt Middle America’s pain. George Bush initially styled himself a “compassionate conservative”. The likes of Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis, on the left, and Barry Goldwater, on the right, may have won brownie points from their supporters for sticking to their principles. But they went down to calamitous defeats. The oddity of this election cycle is not that Mr Obama is moving to the centre but that John McCain is moving to the right.

在初选转入大选之际，向中间路线转变难道不是正当且明智的政治举动吗？罗纳德•里根曾投入大量精力，劝说人们他并不是一位好战的意识形态分子。比尔•克林顿将自己描绘成一位深感中部美国之痛的新民主党人。乔治•布什起初将自己定位成一位”富有同情心的保守主义者”。像沃尔特•蒙代尔（Walter Mondale），迈克尔•杜卡基斯（Michael Dukakis）这样的左派人士与巴里•戈德沃特（Barry Goldwater）这样的右派人士或许会因为坚持原则赢得支持者的称赞，但他们却在选举时一败涂地。这轮选举的奇异之处并不是奥巴马向中间路线转变而是约翰•麦凯恩正在向右翼转变。

Mr Obama’s flip-flop on public finance is certainly cynical (and his willingness to justify it as an act of high principle even more so). But polls suggest that Americans are happy with a certain amount of flip-flopping: Mr Bush has all but destroyed the market in stubborn consistency. And Mr Obama’s hard-edged cynicism also helps to quell one of the biggest doubts about his candidacy-that he is too naive and soft-minded to hold the most powerful job in the world.

奥巴马在财政部竞选经费这一问题上立场摇摆不定自然有其玩世不恭之处（他愿意为此辩护说这是高尚之举愈发显得如此）。但是民调显示美国人对于些许的立场摇移是认可的：布什几乎让美国人忘了还有”立场坚定，始终如一 “这档事。奥巴马这种轮廓鲜明的犬儒主义也有助于消散人们对于他总统候选人身份最大的一项疑虑，那就是他太嫩了，思想太温和了不能胜任这份世界上最有权势的工作。

Mr Obama is capitalising not only on his huge fund-raising advantage over Mr McCain but also on his rival’s problems with his base. He is occupying the middle ground in order to reassure white voters that he shares their values. This is no airy-fairy liberal who is going to allow himself to be pushed around by Middle Eastern despots. This is a shrewd opportunist at work.

此刻奥巴马不仅充分利用他在资金筹措方面相对于麦凯恩的巨大优势，他还拿这位对手与其支持者之间的问题做文章。如今他占据中间地带为的就是让白人选民安心：他的价值观和他们是一样的。这并不是一位会任由自己受中东暴君们摆布的童话般的自由主义者。展现在你面前的是一位精明的机会主义者。

John Kerry’s shadow
约翰•克里的阴影

The vital question is not whether Mr Obama is changing his positions but whether he is changing them for better or worse. Here the picture is largely positive. His new-found enthusiasm for NAFTA and free trade could help to avert a prosperity-destroying drift to protectionism. Indeed, his chief economics adviser, Jason Furman, sounds like the very model of good sense. Mr Obama’s willingness to support wiretapping in certain circumstances suggests that he is trying to strike a balance between security and privacy in what he calls a “dangerous world”: the policy challenge is not to pursue vendettas against the Bush administration but to find a reasonable set of rules to govern surveillance. His repositioning on the Iraq war represents a recognition that the situation on the ground in Iraq has changed dramatically.

关键的问题并非奥巴马是否在改变立场，而是他立场的改变是朝好的方面还是坏的方面发展。这方面的情况大体上是正面的。他对北美自由贸易协定（NAFTA）和自由贸易新发现的热情或许有助于避免其向保护主义漂移，那将是摧毁繁荣之举。事实上，他的首席经济顾问詹森•福尔曼听起来就像是一位判断力强的典范。奥巴马愿意支持在特定情况下的窃听行为显示出他正试图在这样一个被他称为”危险的世界”中在安全和隐私之间达成某种平衡。政策的挑战之处并不在于向布什政府寻仇，而是找到一套合理的规则来治理监视行为。他在伊拉克战争这一问题上立场的重新定位表明他已意识到了伊拉克的实际情况已经发生戏剧化地改变。

If there is a problem with all this repositioning, it is that it is not going far enough for most American moderates. Mr Obama has punted on partial-birth abortion rather than denouncing the whole gruesome procedure. He has insisted on putting restrictions on faith-based social services that most churches find unacceptable. On July 3rd he held not one but two press conferences on Iraq-one in which he seemed to suggest that he would adjust his policy in the light of new realities, another in which he insisted that his position “has not changed”. Mr Obama needs to embrace centrism as a matter of conviction rather than flirting with it as an instrument of political expediency. Otherwise the accusations of flip-flopping that did John Kerry so much harm in 2004 will begin to bite.

如果说他这些重新定位有何问题的话，对美国大多数温和派来说这一问题在于他所作的转变还不够。奥巴马已在晚期堕胎这一议题上放下筹码，但他并没有谴责整个令人毛骨悚然的过程。他坚持要对基于信仰的社会福利事业加以约束，大多数教堂认为这是不可接受的。7月3日他就伊拉克问题举办了不是一场而是两场新闻发布会，在一场发布会上他似乎暗示说，鉴于目前的新形势他将调整其政策，而在另一场发布会上他又坚称他的立场”并没有改变”。奥巴马需要将拥护中间路线视作一种信仰，而不是轻率地将其作为政治上的权宜之计。否则立场摇摆不定这个曾在2004年重创约翰•克里的指责会再度开始发威。

译者：kevin.Ren    http://www.ecocn.org/forum/viewthread.php?tid=12611&extra=page%3D1