The unhappy warrior

失落的斗士

Nov 6th 2008
From The Economist print edition

Fate dealt John McCain an impossible hand

命运给麦凯恩发了一副烂牌

                                        Illustration by KAL

NOTHING became John McCain’s campaign like the ending of it. In a graceful and even moving concession speech on election night, he urged all Republicans to put aside their partisan differences and support Barack Obama as he grapples with the many challenges facing America. His audience was less than equally gracious; but that is hardly his fault.

没有比这场结局更能概括麦凯恩这场竞选了。在大选之夜的退选演讲中，他无不优雅又深情地呼吁所有共和党人摈弃党派分歧，全力支持奥巴马来应对眼下的诸多挑战。可台下的支持者却没有同样的风度；支持者们的失态也不能归罪于麦凯恩。

There have been a few reminders in the closing stages of his doomed campaign of why Americans once fell in love with the guy. Another was his appearance on “Saturday Night Live” on November 1st. Standing next to Tina Fey—the woman whose impersonation of Sarah Palin has done more than anything to turn his campaign into a punchline—Mr McCain made light of his predicament. He could not afford half-an-hour of airtime on the major channels, like his rival, he claimed; so he was appearing on the shopping channel, making his case as best he could while also trying to “sell you some stuff”, such as a limited edition of “Joe action figures”—Joe the Plumber, Joe Sixpack and Joe Biden (pull the cord and he talks for 45 minutes). He also brought the house down at the Al Smith memorial dinner on October 16th.

麦凯恩竞选失败了。可他在最后阶段的表现仍不乏亮点，这足以说明为什么美国人曾为这个老头疯狂过。另一个就是11月1日他现身“周六夜现场”。在节目现场，麦凯恩并不认为自己所处绝境。站在他旁边的还有Tina Fey, 后者惟妙惟肖的佩林模仿秀直接将麦凯恩的竞选沦为头号笑料。麦凯恩表示，他没那么多钱像对手奥巴马一样砸银子在大电台做半个小时的宣传；所以他只能选择购物频道来阐述自己的观点，并尽可能地“推销出一些东西”，比如限量版的“乔系列卡通人物”——管子工乔，半打啤酒乔和乔-拜登（他就这样洋洋洒洒地讲了45分钟）。在10月16日的阿尔-史密斯的纪念晚宴上，麦凯恩妙语连珠，同样抢尽了风头。

But for the most part America has been confronted with a very different McCain from the man who ran against the Bush machine in 2000—a party loyalist who preaches the old-time true religion (particularly on tax cuts and oil-drilling) and who is happy to link arms with the people who destroyed him eight years ago. Why this bizarre volte-face? Mr McCain’s strength in an anti-Republican year lay precisely in the fact that he is not a blood-and-thunder Republican. The McCain of 2000 rejected the strident moralism of the religious right in favour of a more tolerant conservatism, and broke with the my-way-or-the-highway politics of the Republican establishment in favour of bipartisanship. If anybody could hold on to the White House against a Democratic hurricane, it was surely that Mr McCain.

麦凯恩落选的最主要原因是他已不是2000年大战布什的那位麦凯恩了。如今的麦凯恩是个不折不扣的共和党人，信奉旧式的保守主义（这尤其体现在减税和石油开采上），还能和八年前的死敌和好如初。他的这一转变令人摸不着头脑，那又是什么导致这一转变的呢？今年对于共和党来说是个彻彻底底的小年，而麦凯恩的优势就在于他不同于那些张牙舞爪的共和党人。2000年大选，麦凯恩抛弃了惹人讨厌的极右道德主义，转而支持更令人接受的保守主义。他还一改以往共和党唯我独尊的作风，积极支持两党合作。要是说共和党内有人能抵御民主党飓风并入主白宫的话，那此人非麦凯恩莫属。

The state of the economy was surely Mr McCain’s biggest problem, but he was also doomed by two other factors. The first was the impossibility of appealing to both Republican activists and independent voters. Mr McCain needed both groups to win: the activists because they do the hard work in elections and the independents because self-identified Democrats outnumber self-identified Republicans by about ten points. But, as a Democracy Corps poll revealed last month, today’s Republican activists live in a different mental world from the rest of the electorate: a world in which Mrs Palin was a good choice, in which their candidate has been too mealy-mouthed in making his case, and in which the Republican Party needs to move to the right to win elections.

国内经济不景气毫无疑问是麦凯恩竞选的最大硬伤。但另有两大问题导致其竞选失败。第一个问题就是，麦凯恩不可能同时赢得共和党中坚分子和独立选民的支持。而麦凯恩要想获胜，两者都得拿下：要拿下中坚分子是因为他们是竞选活动的中流砥柱。要拿下独立选民是因为自认共和党人的人数比自认民主党人数少大约10%。上月的民意调查显示，如今的共和党中坚分子的想法和其他选民大不一样：他们认可佩林，认为麦凯恩表达政见不够直接，并认为共和党应该右倾才能赢得大选。

The second was media bias. A survey for the Pew Centre’s Project for Excellence in Journalism found that, in the six weeks between the conventions and the last debate, unfavourable stories about Mr McCain outnumbered favourable ones by more than three to one. When Mr McCain tried to focus on “non-Republican” issues such as poverty, the media all but ignored him; when Mr Obama broke his pledge to restrict himself to public financing, the media tut-tutted at first, but quickly moved on. One need only imagine how the New York Times would have reacted if a Republican candidate had broken such a pledge, and then gone on to amass a war chest of $639m to his opponent’s $360m, to see how profound the bias has been.

第二个问题是媒体导向性。一项由皮尤中心发起的新闻业卓越法案调查显示，在共和党召开全国党代会至最后辩论的六周时间里，对于麦凯恩不利的报道是对其有利报道的三倍之多。一旦麦凯恩试图着眼于“非共和党”问题比如贫穷问题，媒体一般对此置之不理；而媒体对于奥巴马未能履行自己的诺言将竞选费用仅限于公共融资一事只是炮轰了两句，转而又偃旗息鼓。很难想像如果换做是一名共和党候选人，而他的经费为$639,000,000，而他的对手仅为$360,000,000，《纽约时报》做出的反应会有多夸张。媒体的偏心由此可见一斑。\

But all this brought out some deep-rooted weaknesses in Mr McCain’s character, too. The self-styled maverick undoubtedly has great strengths—he’s the most entertaining dinner companion in Washington and one of the most natural campaigners in any party. But those strengths go along with equally large weaknesses. He’s a temperamental cove who wears his heart on his sleeve. He’s also a seat-of-the-pants politician with little tolerance for tedium. Mr McCain allowed his dislike of Mr Obama to show through. He may well be right to think that the Wunderkind had broken his word not just on public campaign finance but also on several other issues, including holding a series of “town-hall” debates. But his angry performance in the third debate looked disrespectful, if not actually a little unhinged.

但所有这些也暴露出麦凯恩性格上一些根深蒂固的弱点。毫无疑问，麦凯恩的最大优点是其标新立异的作风——他是政坛饭桌上的开心果，在任何党派都能呼风唤雨。但优点明显，缺点亦然。麦凯恩性格暴躁，口无遮拦，喜欢随性，无法容忍单调乏味的东西。他对奥巴马的厌恶直接挂在脸上。麦凯恩对这个神奇小子不满情有可原，后者不但在竞选经费问题上食言，在其他问题上，比如举行市政厅辩论，也出尔反尔。但麦凯恩在第三场辩论愤怒的表现显得有失风度，说的难听点有点精神错乱。

MrMcCain also paid the price for his aversion to dull slog. He contracted out the hard work of organising his campaign to apparatchiks such as Steve Schmidt, a protégé of Karl Rove. But these apparatchiks seemed more interested in winning the daily news cycle than in sticking to an enduring argument. He also failed to do his homework on the Wall Street meltdown—barrelling into Washington for a White House economic summit and then discovering that he had nothing to say. Being a maverick, it seems, is a useful qualification for a senator, but not for someone who aspires to hold the most powerful and difficult job in the world.

麦凯恩痛恨打硬仗，为此他也付出了代价。他把组织竞选的艰苦工作交给了同僚处理，其中就有Karl Rove的门生Steve Schmidt。可这些人似乎对赢得每日新闻更感兴趣，而不能长久地坚持自己的论点。麦凯恩在华尔街金融危机方面也未能做足功课——他冒失赶往白宫参加金融峰会却发现自己所言无多。标新立异或许足以成为一名参议员，但要想胜任这全世界权力最大、最具挑战性的工作，显然光靠标新立异还不够。

The pain of Palin

佩林之痛

Mr McCain’s various problems, temperamental and circumstantial, found their perfect expression in the worst single decision of the 2008 election season—his choice of Mrs Palin as his running-mate. Mr McCain had hardly met her when he made his fateful decision (he reportedly wanted a centrist such as Joe Lieberman or Michael Bloomberg, but his advisers talked him out of it). Mrs Palin was supposed to help him thread the electoral needle—revving up the base while the maverick-in-chief reached out to independents. Instead she heightened the contradictions of the Republican coalition, bringing out the worst in her party and scaring the pants off swing voters.

麦凯恩的诸多问题，比如脾气暴躁，易于受外部因素影响等，在他选择佩林作为竞选搭档后——这也是他此次选战犯得最严重错误——全面爆发。在做此项决定前，麦凯恩几乎没见过佩林本人（据说，他曾想选一名温和派作为搭档，比如乔-里伯曼或者迈克尔-布隆伯格。但他的顾问团最终说服他选择佩林）。共和党人寄希望于佩林能够挑起大梁，加强原本的保守势力，从而使麦凯恩能够放心地杀向独立选民。结果却是佩林激化了共和党党内分歧，暴露了共和党的弱点，也吓跑了中间派选民。

In the end, there is something tragic about Mr McCain’s fate. The only time when he could display his qualities to the full was when fighting a losing battle against the mighty Bush machine in 2000. And the only time he could seize control of his party was when it was facing the longest odds it had faced since Watergate: torn apart by internal tensions and loathed by most of the electorate. A pity: there are few better men in American politics.

硝烟散尽，麦凯恩的命运多少有点悲凉的味道。2000年，麦凯恩在竞选中完全展现了自我。但不幸地是，遇到了强大的布什阵营，最终落败。今年，麦凯恩终于在党内称雄，可时运不济，此时的共和党已到了四分五裂，遭人唾弃的地步，正到了自水门事件以来最艰难的时刻。
麦凯恩的失败令人扼腕：毕竟美国政坛没什么人比他更优秀了。