经济学人下载:奥巴马的表现,不如人意

Mr Obama says that with the debt fight behind him he can now pivot back to jobs. But the comic opera has meanwhile crystallised doubts about the quality of his leadership. After all, the Republicans won this round, even if they did not win everything they wanted. For example, the debt ceiling has been raised by enough to see the country through the far side of the coming election, without another nail-biting stand-off in between. But on the core principle that Mr Obama chose to put at the centre of the fight—the need, for fairness’s sake, to tackle the deficit with tax rises on the rich as well as spending cuts—it was he who gave way.

奥巴马先生表示，债务之战已经结束，现在他又将专心工作。但是同时这场喜歌剧已经证明其领导能力有问题。毕竟，共和党人赢了这个回合，尽管他们也没有全部如愿以偿。比如，提高的债务上限足以让这个国家维持到下次选举之后，此间将不会再次出现令人焦虑的僵局。奥巴马挑选了核心的原则问题——公平地说，在削减开支的同时，必须还要对富人加税才能解决赤字问题——并将它推到了债务之战的风口浪尖，但是最终让步的也是他。

The president, it is true, did not lose the fight because he lost the argument. He lost because he was not willing to be as reckless as the Republicans. Increasing the debt ceiling is a routine operation that allows the government to pay the bills Congress has already run up. By refusing to raise it unless they got their spending cuts, the Republicans in effect pointed a pistol at the economy and threatened to pull the trigger if they were denied. An alarming number of them sounded crazy enough to carry out this threat. Faced with the danger of a default, Mr Obama and his party had little choice but to surrender. And at least the terms of surrender include the creation of a new joint congressional committee that might, in theory, include tax increases as well as spending cuts when it produces the next slice of deficit reduction.

诚然，总统输掉了这场战争，但是这并不是因为他输了这场辩论。他输是因为他不愿意像共和人那样不负责任。提高债务上限是一次很寻常的操作，从而让政府支付国会已经累积的账单。除非削减开支，否则共和党人拒绝提高债务上限，实际上他们这是举着枪对准了经济，如果他们被拒绝，他们就要扣动扳机。大量共和党人似乎疯狂十足，真的这样做了，令人担忧。面对违约的危险，奥巴马先生及其所属党派别无选择，只能投降。不过投降的条件至少包括了成立新的联合国会委员会，在理论上，这可能包括在该委员会发布下一份赤字削减计划的时候，在削减开支的同时增加税收。

The troubling question is why Mr Obama fell into this trap in the first place. Could he not have made raising the debt ceiling a condition of extending the Bush-era tax cuts last December? And why did he take so long to show that he cared about putting America’s finances in order? He went to the trouble of creating a bipartisan deficit commission, which at the end of last year produced just the sort of “balanced” approach he says he favours. But he then declined either to endorse its findings or present a serious plan of his own. This gave the initiative to the Republicans, who now say, plausibly, that without their brinkmanship there would still have been no start on bringing the debt under control.

令人困扰的问题在于奥巴马先生怎么会陷入这个陷阱。去年12月，他难道不能把提高债务上限当做延长布什时代减税政策的条件吗？为何他花这么多时间表明他致力于整顿美国的金融业？他费力成立了两党赤字委员会，去年底，该委员会提出了他说正好是自己支持的“平衡”做法。但是后来，他既没有支持该委员会的发现，自己也没有给出一份认真的计划。这样就将主动权交给了共和党人，他们现在说，要是他们没有采取边缘政策，现在还没有开始控制债务，这似乎颇有道理。

Critics in his own party say that the president then added a sin of commission to his sin of omission. When the Republicans pointed that metaphorical pistol at the economy, Mr Obama could have made a bigger ruckus about this use of extortion. But he chose instead to plunge in, seduced by the chimera of a “grand bargain” with John Boehner, the Republican speaker. In the end, Mr Boehner left the president waiting at the altar—but not before Mr Obama’s eagerness for the bargain had endowed the idea of haggling over the debt ceiling with a legitimacy it did not deserve.

总统所属党派的批评人士表示总统犯了疏忽罪后接着又犯了违法罪。当共和党人指着这把比喻性的枪对准经济的时候，奥巴马先生本可以掀起更大的波澜，讨论这种敲诈行为。但是他反而选择了陷入其中，受到了与共和党众议院议长约翰．博纳做成“大交易”这一不切实际的想法的引诱。最终，博纳先生让总统难堪不已——围绕债务上限问题争论不休的想法根本不合理，但是奥巴马先生对达成协议的渴望使这种想法变得合情合理，在此之前，博纳先生并没有让总统难堪。