[2009.01.15] George Bush’s legacy: The frat boy ships out

George Bush’s legacy
乔治•布什的遗产

The frat boy ships out
挥别兄弟会男孩

Jan 15th 2009
From The Economist print edition

Few people will mourn the departure of the 43rd president
第43任总统卸任之际将无人致哀

 

HE LEAVES the White House as one of the least popular and most divisive presidents in American history. At home, his approval rating has been stuck in the 20s for months; abroad, George Bush has presided over the most catastrophic collapse in America’s reputation since the second world war. The American economy is in deep recession, brought on by a crisis that forced Mr Bush to preside over huge and unpopular bail-outs.

走出白宫的布什是美国历史上最不受欢迎、最受非议的总统。国内方面，布什的支持率一度在数月间在20%左右徘徊；在国际上，美国的形象遭受了二战之后的最大打击，而这正是布什一手造成的。经济危机使美国陷入衰退的泥潭，布什则不得不为这场沉重的打击买单。

America is embroiled in two wars, one of which Mr Bush launched against the tide of world opinion. The Bush family name, once among the most illustrious in American political life, is now so tainted that Jeb, George’s younger brother, recently decided not to run for the Senate from Florida. A Bush relative describes family gatherings as “funeral wakes”.

美国同时卷入了两场战争，其中一场是布什冒天下之大不韪发动的。布什这个姓一度在美国政坛享有盛名，然而现在却已经臭名昭著，杰布•布什，乔治•布什的弟弟，已经于近期决定放弃佛罗里达州参议院的竞选。布什的一名亲戚形容现在布什家的家庭聚会”如葬礼一般”。

Few people would have predicted this litany of disasters when Mr Bush ran for the presidency in 2000. True, the 2000 election was likely to be divisive because of the peculiar arithmetic of the outcome (Mr Bush lost the popular vote to Al Gore by 500,000 votes, then won a disputed recount in Florida by a few hundred). But for most people Mr Bush was a pretty acceptable choice, and certainly not a crusader-in-waiting.

2000年，当布什第一次竞选总统时，很少有人能够预料到接踵而来的这一场场灾难。2000年那场竞选由于计票系统中的混乱的确导致了一些分歧，布什在普选中输给阿尔•戈尔大约50万票，然而在弗罗里达州重新计票时却以数百票的微弱优势获胜。然而对大多数人来说，布什还是个可以接受的选择，当时他的形象也并非一个摩拳擦掌的十字军战士。

He came across as an affable chap, particularly when compared with his uptight rival. Frank Bruni, who covered his election campaign for the New York Times, wrote in 2002 that “the Bush I knew was part scamp and part bumbler, a timeless fraternity boy and heedless cutup, a weekday gym rat and weekend napster.” And the then governor of Texas presented himself as a centrist-a new kind of “compassionate conservative”, a “uniter rather than a divider”, an advocate of a “humble” and restrained foreign policy. The Economist liked this mixture enough to endorse him in 2000.

与他那气势汹汹的对手比起来，当时的布什看起来颇为和蔼可亲。2002年，弗兰克•布鲁尼在《纽约时报》选战的相关报道中写道：”我所认识的布什缺乏教养，笨嘴拙舌。他是个长不大的兄弟会男孩，总是不断地出洋相。在工作日他总喜欢去健身房泡着，周末上网。”当时还是德州州长的布什以温和派自居，他自称是”富有同情心的保守派”，”团结者而非分裂者”，并倡导推行”低调”而克制的外交政策。2000年时，《经济学家》杂志对这种态度非常欣赏，对布什也大加支持。

How did all this change? How did the uniter become a divider? How did Mr Bush’s governing style shape American politics over the next eight years? And what legacy has the 43rd president left for the 44th?

这些变化是如何发生的？团结者缘何变成了分裂者？在接下来的八年中，布什的执政风格会对美国的政策产生怎样的影响？美国的第43任总统为他的后继者留下了什么样的遗产？

His supporters-the few that remain-point out that this was a presidency knocked sideways by the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001, which no one foresaw. The huge expansion of government and executive power under Mr Bush, and the prosecution of a disastrous war, all unrolled in the wake of those attacks. The financial crisis, which began with overvalued homes and sloppily underwritten mortgages, was the product of numerous forces and failures in which Mr Bush was not a major contributor; they included low interest rates, bankers’ reckless risk-taking, flawed regulation and consumers’ bubble mentality, all of which spanned borders.

极少数至今仍然支持布什的人指出，2001年的911恐怖袭击使布什的总统生涯走上了歧途，这是所有人都无法预料的。那场袭击之后，布什政府的权力与执行能力都大大地扩张了，接着便发动了灾难性的战争。金融危机的直接原因则是对房价的过高估计，以及抵押贷款的溢用；究其源头则是多种诱因的共同作用，布什并非最重要的作俑者。这些诱因包括：贷款利率过低，银行家对风险估计不足，监控体系存在缺陷，以及消费者的盲从心态，这些因素超越了限度都会导致危机。

Yet Mr Bush’s presidency was also poisoned by his own ambition. Mr Bruni’s “timeless fraternity boy” wanted to be a great president. He not only wanted to win the second term that Bill Clinton had denied to his father-though that mattered to him enormously. He also wanted to usher in a period of prolonged Republican hegemony, much as William McKinley had done for his party in the late 19th century. After the September 11th attacks he not only itched to destroy al-Qaeda and the Taliban. He also wanted to tackle the root causes of terrorism in the Middle East. Mr Bush frequently spoke about how much he hated anything that was “small ball”. His close advisers repeatedly described him as a “transformative president”.

布什的野心也对他的总统生涯造成了不利的影响。布鲁尼笔下的”兄弟会男孩”想要成为一名伟大的总统。布什做总统的志向不仅仅是为父亲赢回与比尔•克林顿之间的第二回合战斗（虽然这一点对他也非常重要），他还希望领导共和党获得长期的执政权，正像19世纪末威廉•麦金莱做过的一样。911事件之后，他急不可待地下令摧毁基地组织和塔利班，还要求根除中东地区恐怖主义的根源。布什经常谈到他多么地痛恨”偷垒行为”。他的核心顾问不止一次地称他是一位”革新性的总统”。

Mr Bush’s role model throughout his presidency was not his father but the patron saint of the modern conservative movement, Ronald Reagan. He regarded Reagan as a man who had unleashed free-enterprise and defeated the Soviet Empire, and he tried to do the same with his huge tax cuts and his global war on terror. He mimicked Reagan’s Western style, even relaxing on a Texas ranch where Reagan had taken his holidays on a Californian one; and he echoed Reagan’s enthusiastic use of the word “evil”.

执政期间，乔治•布什所效法的并不是他的父亲，而是现代保守主义运动的守护圣徒：罗纳德•里根。在他的眼中，里根一手摧毁了自由企业，打败了苏联帝国，而这也是他所致力的事业。为此，他大刀阔斧地降低税率，并掀起了全球范围内针对恐怖主义的战争。他甚至刻意模仿里根那西部风格的生活方式，看到里根在加州的农场度假，布什也跑到德州老家的农场过假期；此外，从他对”邪恶”一词的热衷里也可以看到里根的影子。

Other facets of Mr Bush’s personality mixed with his vaulting ambition to undermine his presidency. Mr Bush is what the British call an inverted snob. A scion of one of America’s most powerful families, he is a devotee of sunbelt populism; a product of Yale and Harvard Business School, he is a scourge of eggheads. Mr Bush is a convert to an evangelical Christianity that emphasises emotion-particularly the intensely emotional experience of being born again-over ratiocination. He also styled himself, much like Reagan, as a decider rather than a details man; many people who met him were astonished by what they described as his “lack of inquisitiveness” and his general “passivity”.

然而布什性格中的其他侧面与这份野心相结合，却对他的总统生涯产生了破坏作用。英国人有所谓”反面势利眼”的说法，用在布什身上再合适没有了。布什家族无疑是美国最有权势的家族之一，而作为家族的一员，布什却积极投身阳光地带的平民主义运动；他曾就读于耶鲁大学和哈佛商学院，却处处和”臭老九”们做对。布什皈依了福音基督教会，强调重感情（尤其是重生的感情经历），轻理性。他将自己视为和里根一样的决策者，而不去关注细节工作。许多见过他的人都对他”贫乏的求知欲”和对各种事务的”被动性”惊讶不已。

This led Mr Bush to distrust the Washington establishment, and even to believe that establishment wisdom was probably wrong simply by virtue of what it was. Fred Barnes, a conservative journalist, entitled his book on Mr Bush “Rebel in Chief”. He quotes one Bush confidante as saying: “One tux a term. That’s our idea of outreach to the Washington community.”

正因如此，布什对华盛顿当局失去了信任，他认为华盛顿当局”因为错，所以错”。保守主义派记者弗雷德•巴尼斯写过一本关于布什的书，题目叫做《造反派当权》（Rebel in Chief）。他引用布什一位知交好友的话说：”在我们看来，华盛顿团体是一群朝三暮四的家伙。”

Lack of curiosity also led Mr Bush to suspect intellectuals in general and academic experts in particular. David Frum, who wrote speeches for Mr Bush during his first term, noted that “conspicuous intelligence seemed actively unwelcome in the Bush White House”. The Bush cabinet was “solid and reliable”, but contained no “really high-powered brains”. Karen Hughes, one of his closest advisers, “rarely read books and distrusted people who did”. Ron Suskind, a journalist, has argued that Mr Bush created a “faith-based presidency” in which decisions, precisely because they were based on faith, could not be revised subsequently.

正是由于缺乏求知欲，布什总统对知识分子在总体上抱有怀疑态度，对专家学者尤为如此。在布什的第一个任期内，大卫•弗鲁姆（David Frum）为他撰写发言稿。大卫认为，”显赫的知识分子布什治的白宫显然是不欢迎的”。布什的内阁”值得依赖”，然而却缺乏”真正的聪慧之士”。布什一位最亲密的顾问卡伦•修斯则说他”几乎从来不读书，也不信赖喜欢读书的人”。一位叫做罗恩•萨斯金德的记者曾经写道，布什建立了一种”基于信仰的执政制度”，所有的决策都是基于信仰进行，因此做出决定之后也就不会再反复琢磨。

For the good of the party
为了党的利益

Mr Bush relied heavily on a small inner core of advisers. The most important of these was Dick Cheney, who quickly became the most powerful vice-president in American history. Mr Cheney used his mastery of bureaucracy to fill the administration with his protégés and to control the flow of information to the president. He pushed Mr Bush forcefully to the right on everything from global warming to the invasion of Iraq; he also fought ruthlessly to expand the power of the executive branch, which he thought had been dangerously restricted since Watergate.

布什手下有一个人数不多的核心顾问圈，他对这些人特别倚重。这其中最重要的一名顾问是迪克•切尼。在布什上台之后，切尼迅速成为了美国历史上权力最大的副总统。靠着自己出色的官僚手腕，切尼和他的手下们一起完善了布什政府的执政能力，也控制了总统的信息渠道。从全球气候变化到伊拉克战争，在每一件重大事务上，他都竭力将布什推向右倾一方；与此同时，他毫不留情地扩张政府的权力。在他看来，自水门事件之后，政府权力受到了很大的遏制，这是非常危险的事情。

The two other decisive figures were Karl Rove, Mr Bush’s longtime political guru, and Donald Rumsfeld, his defence secretary. Mr Rove was obsessed by pursuing his dream of a rolling Republican realignment, subordinating everything to party politics. Mr Rumsfeld regarded the Iraq war not, like his boss, as an exercise in democracy-building, but as an opportunity to test the model of an “agile military” that he was pioneering at the Pentagon.

此外还有两位重要人物，一位是布什总统长期以来的政治导师卡尔•罗夫，另一位是国防部长唐纳德•拉姆斯菲尔德。罗夫一直在为共和党复兴的梦想努力，将每件事都与党派政策联系起来。总统将伊拉克战争视为民主构建的一场练习，拉姆斯费尔德则有不同的看法，在他看来这是检测自己在五角大楼中率先推行的agile military模式的测试机会。

The fruit of all this can be seen in the three most notable characteristics of the Bush presidency: partisanship, politicisation and incompetence. Mr Bush was the most partisan president in living memory. He was content to be president of half the country-a leader who fused his roles of head of state and leader of his party. He devoted his presidency to feeding the Republican coalition that elected him.

以上种种造就了布什政权最明显的三大特征：党派之争严重，泛政治化盛行，执政能力欠缺。在人们的记忆中，布什是党派色彩最严重的一位总统。他很乐于做半个国家的总统，将国家元首与党派领袖的角色混为一谈。在整个总统任期内，他都孜孜不倦地为将他推上宝座的共和党提供回报。

The most important legislation of his first year in office was a $1.35 trillion tax cut that handed an extra $53,000 to the top 1% of earners. At his farewell press conference on January 12th Mr Bush called his tax cuts the “right course of action”, as if they were an unpopular but heroic decision. They weren’t. The budget was in surplus in 2000, and both Mr Bush’s main Republican rival, John McCain, and his Democratic opponent, Mr Gore, also wanted to cut taxes, but by less, so as to pay down more debt and shore up Social Security (public pensions). Mr Bush’s much larger tax cut reflected his, and his party’s, belief that lower taxes restrain the size of government, empower individuals and are good for both growth and Republican prospects.

布什上任后第一年通过的最重要的举措是总价值1350亿美元的减税法案，该法案为1%的富人提供了5.3万美元的额外收益。1月12日的离职记者招待会上，布什称该减税法案是”正确的做法”，认为这种举措虽然不受欢迎，却是一项英明的决断。事实上远非如此。2000年的预算有所盈余，布什在民主党中的对手阿尔•戈尔也计划进行减税，然而数目上较布什要少，而将更多的预算用来偿还债务、支撑社会保险体系（尤其是公共退休金）。布什大幅度的减税举措说明他（以及他背后的共和党）相信较低的税率有利于限制政府权力，提高公民地位，对美国的发展和共和党的前景都有好处。

Cheney, the string-puller
切尼，线偶操控者

Mr Bush sold his first tax cut, in 2001, as recession insurance. He did the same in 2003; and though the budget surplus was gone by then, he upped the ante by also lowering taxes on capital gains and dividends. Lower taxes on capital boost investment, but, as one former senior administration official says, that thought was secondary: “It was a political winner that happened to coincide with good economics.” Lower taxes on capital had the potential to bolster a growing “investor class” that tended to vote Republican.

2001年，布什第一次推行减税的时候，是将减税作为经济衰退保险的手段；而2003年，他又再次进行了减锐。这次预算中已经没有了富馀，他将宝押在了降低资本增长与股息分红的税率上。降低资本性收入的税率对投资起了推动作用，然而，正如一位前高级政府官员所说，”良好的经济形势下的巧合造就了这次政治上的胜利。”

Relentless partisanship led to the politicisation of almost everything Mr Bush did. He used his first televised address to justify putting strict limits on federal funding for stem-cell research, and used the first veto of his presidency to prevent the expansion of that funding. He appointed two “strict constructionist” judges to the Supreme Court, John Roberts and Samuel Alito, turned his back on the Kyoto protocol, dismissed several international treaties, particularly the anti-ballistic-missile treaty, loosened regulations on firearms and campaigned against gay marriage. His energy policy was written by Mr Cheney with the help of a handful of cronies from the energy industry. His lacklustre attorney-general Alberto Gonzales, who was forced to resign in disgrace, was only the most visible of an army of over-promoted, ideologically vetted homunculi.

党派斗争使得布什的一举一动都染上了政治色彩。美国政府对在干细胞研究方面的投资进行了严格的限制，在上任后的第一次电视讲话中，布什为这一政策进行了辩护，并在此后动用总统的否决权制止了进一步的资金投入–这是布什在任期内第一次行使否决权。此外，他还为最高法院指派了两位”狭义解释宪法派”的法官：约翰·罗伯茨和塞缪尔·阿里托，拒绝在东京议定书上签字，废除了多项国际条约（特别是反战术导弹条约），放松了对民用枪支的限制，旗帜鲜明地反对同性婚姻。布什政权的能源政策完全由切尼制订，而切尼在能源工业有许多亲密的朋友。阿尔韦托·冈萨雷斯，布什手下那位碌碌无为的司法部长（后来被迫引咎辞职），正是这些思想上的矮子一朝得志之后的真实写照。

Bumbling towards Baghdad
身陷巴格达

The Iraq war was a case study of what happens when politicisation is mixed with incompetence. A long-standing convention holds that politics stops at the ocean’s edge. But Mr Bush and his inner circle labelled the Democrats “Defeaticrats” whenever they were reluctant to support extending the war from Afghanistan to Iraq. They manipulated intelligence to demonstrate that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and had close relations with al-Qaeda. This not only divided a country that had been brought together by September 11th; it also undermined popular support for what Mr Bush regarded as the central theme of his presidency, the war on terror.

伊拉克战争则是一个供研究的案例：泛政治化的倾向与低下的执政能力结合会产生什么样的后果。按照长期以来的惯例，每当涉及海外事务，政党之争便告一段落。然而虽然民主党人勉力支持着美国将反恐战争从阿富汗，布什和他的核心顾问们仍给他们贴上了”民主逃跑党”的标签。在布什政府的授意下，专家学者们出面声称萨达姆•侯塞因持有大规模杀伤性武器，并与基地组织有着密切的联系。这不仅破坏了911事件之后美国两党间的团结局面，同时也使反恐战争受欢迎的程度大打折扣，而反恐战争正是布什眼中执政生涯的核心主题。

Sean Wilentz, a historian at Princeton, remarks how unusual it is for a president to have politicised such a national catastrophe: “No other president-Lincoln in the civil war, FDR in world war two, John F. Kennedy at critical moments of the cold war-faced with such a monumental set of military and political circumstances, failed to embrace the opposing political party to help wage a truly national struggle. But Bush shut out and even demonised the Democrats.”

普林斯顿大学的历史学家肖恩•威兰茨（Sean Wilentz）指出，身为总统，却将国难作为政治斗争的工具，这实在是非同寻常的行为：”从南北战争时的林肯，到二战期间的罗斯福，再到冷战关键时刻的约翰•F•肯尼迪，无论哪位总统，在军政两方面都面临紧要关头时，都与政治上的对立党派达成了和解，团结一致为国家利益而奋斗；然而布什不但对民主党不理不睬，甚至还致力将其妖魔化。”

The invasion of Iraq was like much else in the Bush years-an initial triumph that contained the seeds of disaster. Thomas Ricks, the author of “Fiasco”, argues that “the US-led invasion was launched recklessly, with a flawed plan for war and a worse approach to occupation.” Mr Rumsfeld’s decision to invade with too few troops led inexorably to the breakdown of law and order, which turned the Iraqi population against the Americans, and to the Abu Ghraib scandal, which solidified world opinion against America. But Mr Bush responded to the unfolding disaster with a mixture of denial and stubbornness, refusing to force Mr Rumsfeld to adjust his plans. He engaged in an absurd photo-op to declare “Mission accomplished”, and he also gave medals to three of the architects of the debacle, George Tenet, Tommy Franks and Paul Bremer.

对伊拉克发动的战争和布什在任期内的其他行为一样，起初辉煌的胜利中包含着灾难的种子。《灾难》（Fiasco）一书的作者托马斯•瑞克斯（Thomas Ricks）认为，”美国发动战争的行为是鲁莽的，战争计划本来就有漏洞，而战争之后的占领工作更是一塌糊涂。”拉姆斯菲尔德在决定进攻伊拉克时派出的军队数量太少，导致战后当地的法律与社会秩序都陷入崩溃。正因如此，伊拉克民众对美国不抱任何好感，而阿布格莱布监狱的丑闻更是让世界舆论都坚定地站在了美国的对立面上。面对着不断扩展的灾难，布什总统却总是倔强地否定现实。他不愿下令让拉姆斯菲尔德变更计划，却忙不迭地与人合影留念，宣布”任务完成”。他向三位引领美国走向崩溃的功臣颁发了勋章：乔治•特内特（George Tenet），汤米•弗兰克斯（Tommy Franks）和保罗•布雷默（Paul Bremer）。(注1)

Mr Bush’s weaknesses were on display again in the second great disaster of his administration, Hurricane Katrina, which struck New Orleans in August 2005. The hurricane exposed Mr Bush’s congenital passivity: he did not visit New Orleans until five days later, after first viewing the damage from the safety of Air Force One. It also exposed the consequences of filling your administration with third-rate hacks. The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Michael Brown, a former commissioner for the International Arabian Horse Association, made a hash of dealing with the disaster but nevertheless received an encomium from the president-“Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job”-that rang around the country.

任期内的第二场大灾难再次揭示出了布什的弱点。2005年8月，新奥尔良州遭受了飓风卡特琳娜的袭击。在这场灾难中，布什天生的慢性子暴露无余：直到灾难发生后五天，他才赶到新奥尔良州，在那之前一直稳坐空军一号，视查受灾情况。这件事也告诉大家，麾下尽是三流货色的官员会有什么下场。担任联邦紧急情况治理署的负责人的前国际阿拉伯马协会委员迈克尔•布朗（Michael Brown）把事情弄的一团糟，然而仍然在全国人民面前受到了总统的褒奖：”布朗尼，你辛苦了”。

The Truman hope
杜鲁门式的希望

How will Mr Bush be judged in the light of history? “Many historians”, says Princeton’s Mr Wilentz, “are now wondering whether Bush, in fact, will be remembered as the very worst president in all of American history.” A humbled Mr Bush counters his critics by pointing out that “You never know what your history is going to be like until long after you’re gone.” He frequently invokes the name of Harry Truman as a president who was dismissed at the time, but is now regarded as one of the greats.

从历史的角度讲，又该如何看待布什呢？普林斯顿大学的威兰茨说：”事实上，许多历史学家正在讨论，在人们的记忆中，布什会不会成为美国历史上最糟糕的总统。”对此评论，布什低调地做出了回应：”历史的评价只有在人死后很久才能盖棺定论。”他经常援引哈里•杜鲁门（Harry Truman）作为例子，杜鲁门生前饱受批评，然而现在却已然被视为美国历史上的伟大总统之一。

Mr Bush’s presidency is not without its merits. He supported sensible immigration reform. He proposed tighter regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the now-nationalised mortagage agencies. Congress stymied him on both points. He promoted more members of minorities than any previous president; and he also stood up to the Dixiecrat wing of his party, edging Trent Lott, a Mississippi senator, out of his job as majority leader for segregation-favouring remarks. He maintained good relations with India, Japan and, particularly, Africa, where he launched a $15 billion anti-AIDS programme.

布什的总统生涯并非一无是处。在他的支持与提议下，移民制度进行了卓有实效的改革，房利美（Fannie Mae）和房利美（Freddie Mac）等金融机构都得到了严格的监管。与历任总统相比，他从少数派成员中提拔的官员数量是最多的；他敢于面对共和党内的州权主义分子，密西西比的参议员特伦特•洛特（Trent Lott）发布了赞同种族隔离的言论之后，布什迫使他放弃了参议院中的共和党多数派领导人的位置。他与印度、日本等国保持着良好的关系，尤其是非洲国家，他斥资150亿美元，在非洲国家实施了反艾滋病计划。

 

On trade, too, Mr Bush’s heart was in the right place, though policy was at first subverted by political or strategic priorities. In 2002 he approved tariffs on imported steel to fulfil a promise Mr Cheney made to steelworkers in West Virginia, a state crucial to his 2000 election. That year he also signed a massive increase in farm subsidies so as not to antagonise farm-state congressmen facing election that autumn. But these early protectionist impulses gave way to a more stalwart defence of trade. Mr Bush resisted intense pressure from Congress to punish China for keeping its currency low. After Congress narrowly granted him streamlined authority to negotiate treaties, he pushed the Doha global free-trade agreement and a free-trade area of the Americas. These efforts failed in part because of other countries’ intransigence, notably India’s in the case of the Doha round. In the absence of a broader framework, his administration pursued bilateral trade deals, although often with countries chosen for strategic rather than economic value: Oman and Bahrain, for example, which host American military bases.

在贸易方面，布什总统的立场也是正确的，然而出于政治或是战略的考虑，他的贸易政策从一开始就受到了破坏。2000年的选举中，为了获得西弗吉尼亚州的关键选票，切尼对该州的钢铁工业主做出了承诺；正因如此，布什总统于2002年批准了对进口钢材的关税政策。同年，为了在秋季的国会选举中争取农业地区的支持，他大幅度地增加了农业补贴。任职初期心血来潮地推行了一系列的保护主义政策之后，布什最终还是向自由贸易的坚定捍卫者们做出了让步。他顶着国会的强大压力，对中国保持人民币不升值的做法发动了制裁。在国际条约谈判中，国会授予了他一定程度的决策权；利用这一便利，他推动了多哈国际自由贸易协商和美洲自由贸易区的进程；然而由于其他国家拒绝做出让步（特别是印度在多哈回合谈判中的固执），这些努力最终还是告吹了。虽然缺乏有利的国际贸易形势，布什政府还是继续推动着某些双边贸易关系，然而在选择贸易对象时，往往是出于战略考虑而非纯经济政策，例如巴林和黎巴嫩这些美国的军事基地所在地。

His administration’s handling of the financial crisis alternated between shaky and competent. Swallowing his visceral scorn for finance, Mr Bush delegated crisis management to Henry Paulson, his treasury secretary and a former investment banker. Mr Paulson’s remedies were often blunted by complexity, inconsistency and his insistence that lenders and borrowers pay for their mistakes. His decision to let Lehman Brothers fail significantly intensified the crisis. Still, Mr Paulson regrouped by pouring hundreds of billions of government dollars into the tottering financial system, which has bought a measure of stability. Mr Bush backed this, in violation of his own anti-interventionist impulses.

布什政权对金融危机的处理能力时好时坏。由于布什本人对财政问题极为反感，他将金融危机的处理全部交给了财政部长，前投资银行家亨利•保罗森（Henry Paulson）。然而保罗森的处理手段过于繁琐，自相矛盾之处甚多。他一直坚持贷款方和借款方应当为自己的错误负责，例如放任莱曼兄弟破产，这一决定使得金融危机急剧恶化。保罗森从政府预算中拨款数千亿美元，用以维持摇摇欲坠的金融系统，也算保得一时平安。尽管这有违布什本人的反干预主义观点，然而他还是对这一行为提供了支持

Mr Bush showed more ability to learn from his mistakes than his critics realise or than he himself might like to admit. The second Bush administration was very different from the first. He reached out to America’s allies, particularly through his second secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, establishing good relations with France’s Nicolas Sarkozy and Germany’s Angela Merkel; and he also improved his administration’s profile in the world by firing Donald Rumsfeld and sidelining various neoconservatives.

布什还是有能力从错误中吸取教训的，他的批评者可能没有注意到，甚至他自己都不愿承认。与头一个任期相比，在布什的第二个任期内已经产生了很多变化。他开始向盟国寻求支持，尤其是第二任国务卿康多莉扎•莱斯（Condoleezza Rice）在职期间，他与法国总统尼古拉斯•萨科奇、德国首相安吉拉•默克尔都建立了良好的关系；同时，通过对唐纳德•拉姆斯菲尔德的批评，以及对新保守主义的打压，他在国际上为自己的政权挽回了一些形象。

The president’s legendary stubbornness paid off in one area: his decision to ignore Washington’s wise men and increase troop levels in Iraq, rather than preparing for withdrawal, probably averted disaster there and certainly increased stability. There is even a possibility that Mr Bush’s most controversial decision may eventually be vindicated: if Iraq turns into a beacon of democracy in the Middle East, then he will look much better in a decade’s time than he does today. But that is a big “if”.

布什总统非同寻常的固执从某种意义上来说也是有积极作用的。他对华盛顿智囊团的意见置之不理，坚决拒绝做撤军的准备，反而不断向伊拉克增兵。这也许防止了在伊拉克爆发更大的灾难，某种程度上维护了当地的稳定局面。也许到头来人们会发现，布什最为广受非议的决断正是英明之举：十年之后，如果伊拉克真的成了中东地区民主的明灯，布什的形象会比现在高大很多。然而这个假设也太大胆了。

Farewell to restraint
告别约束

Meanwhile, his policy of cutting taxes while increasing spending-of simultaneously pursuing big government and small government-dramatically swelled the deficit. He inherited a projected ten-year surplus of $5.6 trillion and bequeaths a ten-year deficit of $6 trillion, assuming his tax cuts remain in place. Hardly the makings of a positive judgment from future historians.

布什奉行降低税率与增加财政支出并举的政策，同时追求”大政府”与”小政府”，这也使得财政亏空更为恶化。在他上任时，人们预期未来10年中财政预算将有5.6万亿美元的节余，而到如今他卸任之时，如果他的减税政策持续下去，那么未来十年的财政赤字总计将达6万亿。未来的历史学家对此想必很难做出积极的评价。

In pursuit of his fiscal ambitions, Mr Bush helped roll over or sweep aside long-standing rules and conventions designed to keep the deficit in check. Republicans in Congress pushed through his 2001 and 2003 tax cuts under a parliamentary manoeuvre called “reconciliation” previously reserved for measures that reduced, or did not increase, the deficit. Doing so largely stripped Democrats of their ability to raise procedural obstacles in the Senate, but also required the tax cuts to expire after ten years. As the projected surpluses melted away, Mr Bush cut the horizon in his budgets from ten years to five, masking the long-term impact of his policies.

长期以来，为了对财政赤字加以控制，美国政府形成了一系列的规则与惯例；然而为了达到财政上的目标，布什对这些成例进行了大幅度的改动，甚至干脆置之不理。2001年与2003年，共和党靠着所谓的”调解”政策，两次促使国会通过了布什的减税政策，在这之前，为了减少赤字（至少保证赤字不再增加），这一政策一直被搁置。这一做法大大地削弱了民主党的力量，使他们无法在参议院中通过行政程序阻挠布什施政；然而与此同时，他们需要推行为期十年的减税政策。在规划中的盈余消耗殆尽之后，布什将他预算的报告期限从十年减少到了五年，以此来掩饰减税政策的长期影响。

For years the president refused to include the cost of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars in his budget. He also acquiesced in the expiry of 12-year-old budget rules that made it difficult to cut taxes or increase spending if it raised the deficit. In coming years deficit reduction will be hard enough, with the recession-induced collapse in tax collections and the cost of the bail-outs. Jim Horney, a former Democratic congressional staffer now at the liberal Centre on Budget and Policy Priorities, a think-tank, says it has been made even harder by the disappearance of any culture of restraint in Congress.

多年来，总统在进行财政预算时，一直不愿将阿富汗和伊拉克战争的成本计算在内。在原有的预算规则中，一旦赤字有所增加，便很难推行减税或者增加政府支出的政策；而在他的默许下，延续了12年期的预算规则就此废止。在未来的几年里，由于经济衰退，税收和其他资金收入将大幅度减少，填补财政赤字会变得愈发艰难。吉姆·霍尼以前曾在民主党国会中任职，现在他受聘于一家自由派研究机构：预算与政策优先权中心（Centre on Budget and Policy Priorities）。他认为国会中遏制传统的缺失使得对政府政策的监管变得更为困难。

 

Mr Bush’s biggest failure, however, is on entitlements. The ageing of the population, coupled with rapidly rising health-care costs, means that in coming decades Social Security and Medicare benefits will outstrip workers’ payroll contributions by trillions of dollars. Both programmes presented Mr Bush with a political opportunity. To pry elderly voters away from the Democrats, he promised to add a prescription-drug benefit as part of any Medicare reform. He did so in 2003, winning the support of the AARP, the powerful pensioners’ lobby, which has long been seen as closer to the Democrats. But in the end he achieved few cost savings, while adding a staggering $8 trillion to Medicare’s unfunded liability (see chart).

然而布什总统的最大败笔还是保险制度。美国人口正在逐渐老龄化，而医疗费用又在迅速上涨。这意味着在接下来的几十年中，社会保险和医疗保险的金额将远远超过工人薪金的承受能力，总额度将达数万亿美元。这两个计划都为布什提供了政治上的机会。为了从民主党手中争取年老的选民，他承诺将处方药物计划列入医疗保险制度改革的一部分。2003年他履行了自己的承诺，并获得了美国退休人员协会的支持。而在此之前，这些离退休人员团体与民主党的关系更为接近。然而最终他没能节省医疗成本，而美国医疗保险系统未偿清的债务中又加上了一个令人咋舌的数字：8万亿美元。

Social Security, founded in the Depression to provide workers with a secure pension, has defied all recent attempts to make it solvent. Although such an attempt was part of Mr Bush’s first election campaign, it was not solvency that animated him, but the prospect of workers diverting some of their Social Security contributions to private investment accounts. Such accounts were intended as the centrepiece of the Republican Party’s “ownership society”.

社会保险最初是在大萧条期间建立起来的，目的是保证工人能够获得退休金。虽然布什政府做了多方努力，然而还是无法偿清社会保险的欠额。虽然这其中的一部分行动是布什在第一次选战中所作出的承诺，然而对布什来说，推行这些政策的动机并非偿付社会保险金本身，他在意的是工人们可以将他们的社会保险配额转入个人投资帐户。这些个人投资帐户正是民主党所倡导的”所有权社会”的核心所在。

Economists are divided on the merit of such accounts, but agree they do nothing to restore solvency: that requires slimmer benefits, higher taxes, or both. Because of the political peril of touching Social Security, broad reform demands bipartisan support. Yet David Walker, the federal government’s chief auditor from 1998 to 2008, says Mr Bush doomed his own effort, launched after his 2004 re-election, by seeking to shape its outcome from the start. He had appointed an advisory commission whose members first had to agree to support private accounts (which many Democrats oppose). He issued detailed proposals for private accounts while eschewing, until much later, solvency proposals. His administration staged some 200 “town hall” events attended by pre-screened participants, Mr Walker says, yet at the end of it all support for Mr Bush’s proposal was lower than when it began.

至于个人投资帐户的功过，经济学家们各执一辞。然而无论哪一方都同意，这种投资方式对偿还能力毫无益处，个人投资帐户存在的前提是较低的保险金，或者较高的税率，或者两者并行。触及社会保险制度的改革总是充满着危险，需要来自两党的共同支持。1998年至2008年期间担任联邦政府的审计长的大卫•沃克（David Walker）说，是布什自己毁掉了自己的努力。在2004年连任成功之后，他试图从头开始改变这一结果。他任命了顾问委员会，该委员会中的成员全是设立个人帐户的支持者（许多民主党对此表示反对）。针对个人帐户，他提出了一系列的建议，然而对清偿债务一直闭口不谈，直到很久之后，他才开始面对这个问题。沃克称布什政府发起了约200场”市政厅”活动，并事先对参加者进行了严格的甄选，然而最终支持布什建议的人比开始时还要少。
Between the Medicare drug benefit and the failure to restore solvency to Social Security, the long-term unfunded cost of America’s programmes for the elderly had last year reached a stratospheric $43 trillion, or 5% of future wages, compared with $13 trillion, or 3% of future wages, in 2000. Mr Obama and Congress may still be able to mend entitlements. But they start with a bigger and more imminent danger than Mr Bush did eight years ago, and one made even harder by the deep hole the current recession has created in the budget.

布什成功地推行了医疗保险处方药计划，在社会保险系统的清偿上遭到了失败。除此以外，到去年为止，美国养老保险体系中的长期未偿还费用已经高达创纪录的43万亿美元，在未来工资收入中的比例达到了5%；2000年，欠款总额是13万亿美元，比例是3%。奥巴马和他的国会可能能够对保险制度进行一定的修复，然而他们在上任伊始所面临的情况比起8年前布什上任时的要危险很多，紧迫很多。考虑到当前的经济衰退造成了预算中大笔的亏空，他们的处境会更加艰难。

The costs of ambition
野心的代价

The neoconservatives who had such influence over Mr Bush argued that unintended consequences were usually more important than the intended ones. The Bush presidency has proved them right in this, if in little else.

布什总统受新保守派的影响很深。新保守派称，无意中造成的后果比有意造成的更重要。即使没有其他例子，布什的执政生涯也印证了这句话。

A president who laboured to produce Republican hegemony ended up dramatically weakening the Republican Party. The Democratic Party is now in a more powerful position than it has been at any time since the second world war. In the Senate, the Democrats have a majority of 59 seats to 41 (including two independents who caucus with the Democrats); in the House, they hold 256 seats to the Republicans’ 178. Americans who came of age during the Bush years identify with the Democrats by the largest majority recorded for any age cohort since the second world war.

作为总统，布什致力于建立共和党的统治地位，然而最终共和党的势力却遭到了严重的削弱，民主党的力量达到了二战以后的最高峰，在参议院中，民主党获得了59：41获得了席位上的大多数（另外还有两位参加民主党会议的独立参议员）；在众议院，民主党有256个席位，共和党只有178个。二战以来最大的人数优势证明，在经历了布什的时代之后，美国人对民主党产生了认同。

A president who believed that America’s global supremacy was guaranteed by America’s unrivalled military power ended up demonstrating the limits of both. Many of America’s closest allies in Europe refused to co-operate with the Iraq war. Many of America’s rivals used America’s travails in Iraq to extend their power: Iran is more powerful than it was in 2000, and closer to acquiring a nuclear bomb; Russia and China have extended their web of alliances and strengthened their regional influence. Mr Bush’s recalibration of his policies in his second term suggests that even he recognises that America’s loss of soft power has cost it dear.

作为总统，布什依仗着美国独一无二的军事力量，深信美国在国际事务中拥有至高无上的主宰权；然而结果却让人们看到，美国的军事力量和国际影响力都不是无限的。美国在欧洲的许多亲密战友拒绝在伊拉克战争中与其合作，而敌人们却趁着美国在伊拉克陷入苦战扩大了自己的势力：与2000年相比，伊朗的力量更为强大，并在核武器的研制方面取得了进展；俄罗斯与中国也扩大了势力网，并加强了在局部地区的影响力。在连任期间布什对政策进行了一些校正，这表明他自己也意识到美国正在为软实力的流失付出代价。

The American military machine is under intense strain. The demands of tackling the Iraq insurgency have forced America to short-change Afghanistan. Deployments have grown longer and redeployments more frequent. Recruitment standards are going down. The neoconservative dream of a muscle-bound America knocking down the “axis of evil” and planting democracies from North Korea to Iran looks, more than ever, like an overheated fantasy cooked up in a think-tank.

美国的军事系统面临着巨大的压力。为了应付伊拉克的动乱，美国不得不拆东墙补西墙，从阿富汗战场上调兵。布署部队所花费的时间越来越长，而对布署的调整也越来越频繁。征兵标准在不断地降低。美国已经筋疲力尽，新保守派们期待美国能够击倒”邪恶轴心”，并在从北朝鲜到伊朗的广阔范围内扶植民主政权，现在看来这不过是智囊团们头脑发热时做的美梦。

Finally, Mr Bush also demonstrated the limits of capitalist triumphalism. The Bush administration was as business-friendly as any in American history: Mr Bush was the first president with an MBA (from Harvard) and he appointed four CEOs to his cabinet, more than any previous president. The administration was also wedded to the fundamental tenets of Reaganomics: cut taxes and free the supply side and everything else will take care of itself. Mr Cheney even argued explicitly that “Reagan taught us that deficits don’t matter.”

最后，在布什执政期间，人们意识到了资本家们的信心也并非无穷无尽的。在美国历史上，布什政府与商业人士的关系最为友好：布什本人拥有哈佛大学工商管理硕士学位，并将四位公司总裁选入了他的内阁，任何一位前任都不曾有过这样的举措。布什政府坚持推行里根主义的信条：降低税率，放松对供应限制，任社会经济自行发展。切尼曾经明确提出”里根告诉我们赤字并不重要。”

Mr Bush now leaves behind a tax system in some ways less efficient than the one he inherited, in need of annual patches, and unable to fund the government even in good times. He also leaves behind a broken budget process. Any economic triumphalism is long gone. Many of the CEOs, most notably Donald Rumsfeld and Paul O’Neill, proved to be dismal administrators. Reaganomics helped to produce a giant deficit. The financial crisis has made re-regulation rather than deregulation the mantra in Washington, while government has acquired a much bigger role in the economy through its backing of banks and car companies.

布什卸任时的税收系统比他继任时的效率更为低下，每年都要经历一番修修补补，而即使是运作良好的时候，税收也无法为政府财政提供稳定的支持。而预算体系更是破烂不堪。经济上的信心早已不复存在。许多大公司的总裁都表示缺乏信心，在这中间唐纳德•拉姆斯费尔德和保罗•奥尼尔最为引人注目。里根式的经济政策产生了更严重的赤字。金融危机说明华盛顿应当加强对金融系统的监管，而非放松控制；而政府已经习惯了通过对银行业和汽车工业的支持在国民经济中扮演重要的角色。

Next!
下场换人！

“I inherited a recession, I’m ending on a recession,” he noted at his press conference on January 12th. He wasn’t asking for pity, only to be judged on what happened in between. Unfortunately, that economic legacy is littered with wasted opportunity, bad judgments and politicised policy. The budget surplus he inherited is now a deficit, the fiscal hole in America’s retiree programmes is bigger than ever, the tax system is an unstable, patched-up mess.

在一月12日的记者招待会上，布什说道：”我在衰退中上任，也在衰退中下台。”他这么说并不是为了请求同情，只是对自己任期内发生的一切做一个评断。然而不幸的是，他浪费了机会，做出了错误的决断，在制订政策时受到了政治倾向，为继任者留下了的经济局面可谓一团乱麻。他继任时的预算盈余已经变成了赤字，美国的退休保险体系中的漏洞比以往更为庞大，七拼八凑起来的税收系统更是危如累卵。

It is not all his fault. But for the most part, good policy repeatedly took a back seat to Mr Bush’s overweening political ambition. Both the country and, ultimately, the Republican Party are left the worse for it.

这并非全部是布什的责任，然而在布什的任期内，良好的政策一再让位于政治上的野心，这无疑是当今美国困局的主要源头。美国面临着布什留下的糟糕局面，对共和党来说更是如此。

注：
1.据维基百科介绍，
George Tenet：负责调查伊拉克大规模杀伤性武器的CIA官员。
Tommy Franks：阿富汗战争与伊拉克战争的总指挥。
Paul Bremer：负责伊拉克战后的政权重建工作。

译者：Lennon.W       http://www.ecocn.org/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=16680