America not quite at its best
美國并不在理想狀態

The election has taken a nasty turn. This is mainly the Republicans’ fault
大選開始惡毒了起來，這主要是共和黨的錯

AS RECENTLY as a few months ago, it seemed possible to hope that this year’s presidential election would be a civilised affair. Barack Obama and John McCain both represent much that is best about their respective parties. Mr Obama is intelligent, inspiring and appears by instinct to be a consensus-seeking pragmatist. John McCain has always stood for limited, principled government, and has distanced himself throughout his career from the religious ideologues that have warped Republicanism. An intelligent debate about issues of the utmost importance-how America should rebuild its standing in the world, how more Americans could share in the proceeds of growth-seemed an attainable proposition.
幾個月之前，今年的大選看起來有可能是一場文明的競賽。巴拉克奧巴馬和約翰麥凱恩都代表了他們各自黨派最好的一面。奧巴馬聰明，有感染力，似乎骨子里就是一個始終尋求共識的實用主義者。麥凱恩一直以來都支持自律的有限政府，并且始終和扭曲共和主義的宗教意識形態人士保持一定距離。他們非常有可能就一些極端重要議題-如何使美國在國際社會中重樹形像，如何讓更多的美國人共享發展的成果-展開睿智的辯論。

It doesn’t seem so now. In the past two weeks, while banks have tottered and markets reeled, the contending Democrats and Republicans have squabbled and lied rather than debated. Mr McCain’s team has been nastier, accusing Mr Obama of sexism for calling the Republican vice-presidential candidate a pig, when he clearly did no such thing. Much nastier has been the assertion that Mr Obama once backed a bill that would give kindergarten children comprehensive sex education. Again, this was a distortion: the bill Mr Obama backed provided for age-appropriate sex education, and was intended to protect children from sex offenders.
但從現在看來，這種情形不會發生了。在銀行和市場都步履維艱的過去兩周內，競爭中的民主黨和共和黨不僅沒有展開預期的辯論，反而為一些小事喋喋不休，胡言亂語。麥凱恩團隊相對而言更惡劣一些：他們說奧巴馬把共和黨副總統候選人稱為豬，以此指責他有性別歧視，而事實上奧巴馬根本沒有這么說過。更有甚者他們聲稱奧巴馬曾經支持過一項要求為幼兒園兒童提供全面的性教育的法案。這種說法也是在扭曲事實：奧巴馬支持的這個法案要求為兒童提供與其年齡相適的性教育，以保護他們免受性侵犯。

These kinds of slurs seem much more personal, and therefore unpleasant, than the more routine distortions seen on both sides. Team McCain accuses Mr Obama of planning to raise taxes for middle-income Americans (in fact, the Democrat’s plan raises them only for those earning more than $250,000); Mr Obama claims Mr McCain wants to fight in Iraq for 100 years (when the Republican merely agreed that he would gladly keep bases there for that long to help preserve the peace, as in Germany) and caricatures him far too readily as a Bush toady (when Mr McCain’s record as an independent senator has been anything but that).
上述這類攻擊比兩黨常規的歪曲事實的行為更加針對個人，因此也更加讓人感覺不快。麥凱恩團隊指責奧巴馬計劃對中產階級美國人增稅（事實上，他的計劃只針對那些年收入在25萬美元以上的人）；奧巴馬聲稱麥凱恩希望伊戰持續100年（而后者只是聲稱，為了維持伊拉克的和平，他很樂意把美軍的軍事基地保留足夠長時間，就如同在德國一樣）；奧巴馬還把麥凱恩描繪為布什的翻版（麥凱恩作為一個獨立參議員的記錄毫無疑問否定了這一點）。

An issue of life and life
生命議題和生命本身

The decision to descend into tactics such as the kindergarten slur shows that America is back in the territory of the “culture wars”, where the battle will be less about policy than about values and moral character. That is partly because Mr Obama’s campaign, perhaps foolishly, chose to make such a big deal of the virtues of their candidate’s character. Most people are more concerned about the alarming state of the economy than anything else; yet the Democrats spent far more time in Denver talking about Mr Obama’s family than his economic policy. The Republicans leapt in, partly because they have a candidate with a still more heroic life story; partly because economics is not Mr McCain’s strongest suit and his fiscal plan is pretty similar to Mr Bush’s; but mostly because painting Mr Obama as an arrogant, elitist, east-coast liberal is an easy way of revving up the Republican Party’s base and what Richard Nixon called the “silent majority” .
共和黨采取”幼兒園謠言”這類下三濫的手段說明，美國又開始回到”文化沖突”這條老路上了。在這種情況下，競選的重點不再是政策而是價值觀和道德品質。競選之所以回到這條路上部分是因為奧巴馬的競選團隊，也許是有點愚蠢地，大肆宣傳他們的候選人的優點美德。相對其他方面，大部分民眾更加關心嚴峻的經濟形勢；但民主黨在丹佛卻把更多的時間用在講述奧巴馬的家庭故事上，而不是宣傳其經濟政策。共和黨也打”文化沖突”牌，部分是因為他們的候選人有一個更加有英雄氣概的故事；部分是因為經濟并不是麥凱恩的強項，而他的財政計劃和布什的極其相似；但最主要的是因為把奧巴馬描繪成一個傲慢，精英主義，東岸氣息的自由主義者是穩定共和黨基礎和蠱惑尼克松所稱的”沉默的大多數”人士的捷徑。

The decision to play this election, like that of 2004, as a fresh instalment of the culture wars is disappointing to those who thought Mr McCain was more principled than that. By choosing Sarah Palin as his running-mate he made a cynical tryst with a party base that he has never much liked and that has never much liked him. Mr McCain’s whole candidacy rests on his assertion that these are perilous times that require a strong and experienced commander-in-chief; but he has chosen, as the person who may be a 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency, someone who demonstrably knows very little about international affairs or the economy.
像2004年一樣，今年的大選再一次大打”文化”牌，讓那些原以為麥凱恩比布什更加自律的人大失所望。通過選擇薩拉佩琳作為競選伙伴，麥凱恩與原來那些他不怎么喜歡并且也不怎么喜歡他的共和黨基礎人士達成了妥協。麥凱恩的整個競選活動基于這樣一個理念：現在是一個危機四伏的時代，美國需要有一個強力的，有經驗的三軍統帥；但他卻像一個遠離政治的72歲老人一樣，選擇了佩琳這位大家公認對國際事務和經濟問題都不怎么了解的人。

What Mrs Palin does do, as a committed pro-lifer, is to ensure that the evangelical wing of the Republican party will turn out in their multitudes. Mr McCain has thus placed abortion, the most divisive cultural issue in America, at the centre of his campaign. His defenders claim that it is too big an issue to be ignored, that he has always opposed abortion, that culture wars are an inevitable part of American elections, and that it was only when he appointed Mrs Palin that the American public started to listen to him. All this is true: but the old Mr McCain, who derided the religious right as “agents of intolerance”, would not have stooped to that.
佩琳所能夠做的是，作為一個忠實的反墮胎人士，她能夠確保共和黨內的絕大多數福音教派人士積極投票。麥凱恩也因此把墮胎這個美國最具爭議性的文化議題，置于競選的核心地位。他的支持者們聲稱：這個議題非常重要，因而不能被輕易忽略過去；麥凱恩一直以來反對墮胎；文化沖突是美國競選不可避免的一部分；只有在他選擇佩琳以后，美國才開始傾聽他的想法。這些都是真的：但是曾經嘲笑宗教右派為”不容異見者”代言人的老麥凱恩，不應該墮落成現在這樣。