莫因政治僵局看扁美国

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莫因政治僵局看扁美国

天之聪教育 2013-04-16 天之聪教育 260次

莫因政治僵局看扁美国

America’s problem is not political gridlock

With last week’s release of the president’s budget, Washington has once again descended into partisan squabbling. In the US today, there is pervasive concern about the basic functioning of democracy. Congress is viewed less favourably than ever before in the history of opinion polling. There is widespread revulsion at political figures seemingly unable to reach agreement on measures to reduce future budget deficits. Pundits and politicians alike condemn “gridlock”. Angry movements, such as Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party, are present and still active on the extremes of both sides of the political spectrum.

上周公布了总统预算方案后，华盛顿再次陷入党派争端。在今天的美国，人们对民主政体的基本运转普遍感到担忧。在民调历史中，国会在美国人眼里的形象空前糟糕。人们普遍反感的是，政治人物似乎无法商定降低未来预算赤字所需采取的措施。评论人士和政界人士都在谴责“僵局”。诸如“占领华尔街”(Occupy Wall Street)和“茶党”(Tea Party)等愤怒的运动仍然存在，并活跃于政坛的两个极端。

Meanwhile, profound changes are redefining the global order. Emerging economies, led by China, are converging towards the west. Beyond the current economic downturn lies the even more serious challenge of the rise of technologies, which may raise average productivity but will displace large numbers of workers. Public debt is increasing in a way that is without precedent except in times of total war. A combination of an ageing population and the rising prices of health and education will put pressure on future budgets.

与此同时，全球秩序正在发生深刻变化。以中国为首的新兴经济体正在与西方融合。在当前的经济低迷背后，还有科技进步带来的更加严峻的挑战，科技可能会提高平均生产率，但也会让大量工人失业。公共债务的增加速度，只有在全面战争的时期才找得到先例。人口老龄化与医疗和教育成本上升相结合，将给未来预算带来压力。

Anyone who has worked in a political position in Washington has had ample experience with great frustration. Almost everyone in US politics feels there is much that is essential yet unfeasible in the current environment. Many yearn for a return to an imagined era when centrists in both parties negotiated bipartisan compromises that moved the country forward. Yet fears about the functioning of the US government have been a recurring feature of the political landscape since Virginian Patrick Henry’s 1791 assertion that the spirit of the revolution had been lost.

任何在华盛顿政界工作过的人，都会充分体会到一种严重的挫败感。美国政界几乎每一个人都感觉，有很多事不可或缺，但在当前环境下却是不可行的。很多人渴望回到一个想象的时代，两党中间派谈判达成两党妥协，推动国家前进。但是，自从1791年弗吉尼亚州的帕特里克•亨利(Patrick Henry)断言革命精神已经丢失以来，对美国政府运转功能的担忧一直是政坛的常见现象。

It is sobering to contrast today’s concern about political paralysis with that which gripped Washington during the early 1960s. Then, the prevailing diagnosis was that a lack of cohesive and responsible parties for voters to choose from precluded the clear electoral mandates necessary for decisive action. While there was a flurry of legislation passed in the 1964-66 period after a Democratic electoral landslide, Vietnam and Watergate followed, all leading to President Jimmy Carter’s declaration of a crisis of the national spirit. Despite the rose-tinted view today, there was hardly high rapport in Washington during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. During his time in office Bill Clinton worked hard at compromising with a US Congress controlled by Republicans, only to be impeached by the House of Representatives.

将当前对政治瘫痪的担忧与上世纪60年代初华盛顿的格局进行对比，是令人清醒的。当时的主流诊断是，没有连贯、负责任的政党供选民选择，导致高层没有采取果断行动所需要的选民明确授权。尽管在民主党以较大优势赢得大选之后的1964年到1966年期间通过了一系列立法，但接着就是越南战争和水门事件(Watergate)，最终导致吉米•卡特(Jimmy Carter)总统宣告民族精神陷入危机。尽管今天人们带着浪漫的眼光怀念罗纳德•里根(Ronald Reagan)主政期间，但那时华盛顿几乎从来没有很好的默契。比尔•克林顿(Bill Clinton)执政期间一直在努力与共和党控制的国会达成妥协，但最终却被众议院弹劾。

Throughout American history, division and slow change have been the norm rather than the exception. While often frustrating, this has not always been a bad thing.

纵观美国历史，分歧和缓慢的变化一直是常态而不是例外。尽管这往往令人心烦，但并不总是坏事。

There were probably too few checks and balances as the US entered the Vietnam and Iraq wars. There should have been more checks and balances in place before the huge tax cuts of 1981, 2001 and 2003, or to avert the many unfunded entitlement expansions of the past few decades. Most experts would agree that it is a good thing that politics thwarted the effort to establish a guaranteed annual income in the late 1960s and early 1970s and the effort to put in place a “single-payer” healthcare system during the 1970s.

美国卷入越战和伊拉克战争的时候，很可能制衡不够。在1981年、2001年以及2003年大减税之前，本来是应该有更多制衡的。制衡本来也有可能避免过去几十年期间很多资金没有着落的福利扩大方案。大多数专家都认为，政坛纠纷挫败某些努力是一件好事，包括上世纪60年代末和70年代初创建保障年收入的计划，以及70年代实施“单一支付方”医疗体系的计划。

The great mistake of the gridlock theorists is to suppose that all progress comes from legislation and that more legislation consistently represents more progress. While these are seen as years of gridlock, consider what has happened in the past five years.

僵局理论家的一大错误是假定所有的进步都来自于立法，而更多的立法必然意味着更大的进步。虽然当前的僵局被视为已持续多年，但我们还是来考虑一下过去五年发生的情况吧。

The US moved faster to contain a systemic financial crisis than any country facing such an episode has done in the past generation. Through all the fractiousness, enough change has taken place that without further policy action, the ratio of debt to gross domestic product is expected to decline for the next five years. Beyond that, the outlook depends largely on healthcare costs – but their growth has slowed to the rate of GDP growth for three years now – the first such slowdown in half a century. At last, universal healthcare has been passed and is now being implemented. Within a decade it is likely that the US will no longer be a net importer of fossil fuels. Financial regulation is not in a fully satisfactory place but has received its most substantial overhaul in 75 years. Most schools and teachers are for the first time evaluated on objective metrics of performance. Gay marriage has become widely accepted across the states.

在遏制一场系统性金融危机方面，美国的行动要比过去一代人期间任何面对这一局面的国家都要快。在所有这些争执发生的同时，已经发生了足够多的变化，即便没有进一步政策行动，预计未来5年债务与国内生产总值(GDP)的比率也会降低。除此之外，前景在很大程度上取决于医保成本，但3年来其上涨速度已减慢至GDP的增速——这是半个世纪以来第一次出现这样的放缓。全民医保法案终于得到通过，正在落实中。10年内，美国很有可能不再是化石燃料净进口国。金融监管尽管不尽如人意，但也实现了75年来最重大的大改革。大多数学校和老师首次按照客观表现指标得到评价。各州也普遍接受了同性婚姻。

No comparable list can be put forth for Japan or countries in western Europe. Yes, change comes rapidly to some of the authoritarian societies of Asia. But it may not endure and may not always be for the better.

日本或者西欧国家没有相应的成绩。没错，亚洲一些威权社会变化很快，但它们的变化可能无法持续，也不一定是好事。

Anyone prone to pessimism about the US would do well to ponder the alarm with which it viewed the Soviet Union after it launched the Sputnik satellite or Japan’s economic rise in the 1980s and the early 1990s. One of America’s greatest strengths is its ability to defy its own prophecies of doom.

任何对美国持悲观立场的人，都不妨想一想美国震惊地看待苏联发射Sputnik人造地球卫星或者日本在上世纪80和90年代初的经济崛起。美国最大的优势之一就是证明自己的末日预言错了。

None of this is to say that the US does not face huge challenges. But these are not due to structural obstacles. They are about finding solutions to problems such as rising inequality and climate change – where we do not quite know the way forward. This is not a problem of gridlock – it is a problem of vision.

这一切都不意味着美国没有巨大的挑战，但这些挑战都不是结构性障碍所致。它们的关键在于需要针对问题（如不断加剧的不平等和气候变化）找到解决方案，在这些问题上我们还不太确定出路在哪里。这并不是僵局的问题，而是愿景问题。