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United States
美國版塊
Lexington
列克星頓專欄
It’s messing with Texas
攪亂的德克薩斯州
Greg Abbott is battling the coronavirus with one hand and his party’s lunatic fringe with the other
格雷格·雅培用一只手與冠狀病毒作斗爭，用另一只手搏斗政黨極端分子團體
In the first months of the coronavirus pandemic, Greg Abbott seemed happy to let Texas’s 254 county and 1,214 city authorities take the lead. And the conservative governor had little to gain by organising an economic lockdown that a minority of Republicans considered tantamount to treason. The state’s vastness—with its widening contrast between rural reaches and exploding metropolises—argued for local decision-making. By late March, however, with Texas still relatively unscathed by the virus, Mr Abbott’s calculation changed. He struck down an effort to make mask-wearing legally enforceable in Houston. He also issued orders—ahead of almost any other governor—to reopen the bars and restaurants that local officials had shuttered. It must have seemed like good politics as well as economics at the time.
在疫情爆發的前幾個月，格雷格·雅培很樂意讓德克薩斯州的254個縣和1214個市政府起到帶頭作用。德克薩斯州的鄉村地區和爆發性增長的都市的差距逐漸擴大，需要地方做出決策。這個保守黨州長組織了一次經濟封鎖，但是一無所獲，少數共和黨人認為該行為無異于叛國。然而到了3月底，德克薩斯州仍然相對沒有受到病毒的傷害，雅培的預測發生了變化。他打擊了休斯頓佩戴口罩合法化的舉措。而且，他比其他州長更早地下令重新開放當地官員關閉的酒吧和餐館。這在當時看來一定是個好的政治和經濟舉措。
Texas is now a centre of the viral wave sweeping the South and West. The state is seeing well over 6,000 new infections a day, five times the number of a month ago. And most are in Houston, where scenes reminiscent of New York in April are unfolding. Last week the biggest hospital network in America’s fourth-biggest city said its intensive-care wards were almost full. Mr Abbott meanwhile ordered bars and other non-essential businesses to close again, forced restaurants to cut their capacity by half and urged Texans to wear masks, as he mostly does. The would-be pioneer of reopening has become the first governor to order a reclosing.
現在，冠狀病毒的浪潮席卷美國南部和西部，德州正位于這場浪潮的中心。該州每天新增感染人數超過6000人，是一個月前的5倍。大多數感染病例在休斯頓，那里的場景讓人想起四月的紐約。上周，美國第四大城市的最大的醫院網絡表示，其重癥監護病房幾乎滿員。同時，雅培下令要求酒吧和其他非必要的企業再次關門，迫使餐館客流量減半，并敦促德州人佩戴口罩，就像他通常做的那樣。這位重新開放的準先鋒成為第一位下令重新封鎖的州長。
His policy twists have been heavily criticised from both sides of the aisle, with some justification. A cautious politician, whose preference for handing down edicts after slow deliberation reflects his background as a judge, Mr Abbott has shown more calculation than leadership during the crisis. He did not endorse the local officials he deferred to early on, but hid behind them. His move to countermand them reflected a decade-long Republican campaign to centralise power in Austin in order to peg back the Democratic cities. Even so, Mr Abbott deserves to be cut a little slack.
他在政策上的扭轉受到兩黨的嚴厲譴責，這是合理的。雅培是一名謹慎的政治家，他傾向于在緩慢的審議之后再發布命令，這反映了他作為法官的背景。他在危機時展現了更多的是推測能力，而不是領導能力。他沒有支持他早期聽從的當地官員的意見，而是躲在他們后面。他反對這些意見的舉動反映了共和黨人的一項長達十年之久的運動，即在奧斯汀集中權力以遏制民主城市。即便如此，還是應該對雅培州長寬容一點。
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