经济学人下载:列克星顿专栏--搅乱德克萨斯州(1)

United States
美国版块

Lexington
列克星顿专栏

It’s messing with Texas
搅乱的德克萨斯州

Greg Abbott is battling the coronavirus with one hand and his party’s lunatic fringe with the other
格雷格·雅培用一只手与冠状病毒作斗争，用另一只手搏斗政党极端分子团体

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.
在疫情爆发的前几个月，格雷格·雅培很乐意让德克萨斯州的254个县和1214个市政府起到带头作用。德克萨斯州的乡村地区和爆发性增长的都市的差距逐渐扩大，需要地方做出决策。这个保守党州长组织了一次经济封锁，但是一无所获，少数共和党人认为该行为无异于叛国。然而到了3月底，德克萨斯州仍然相对没有受到病毒的伤害，雅培的预测发生了变化。他打击了休斯顿佩戴口罩合法化的举措。而且，他比其他州长更早地下令重新开放当地官员关闭的酒吧和餐馆。这在当时看来一定是个好的政治和经济举措。

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.
现在，冠状病毒的浪潮席卷美国南部和西部，德州正位于这场浪潮的中心。该州每天新增感染人数超过6000人，是一个月前的5倍。大多数感染病例在休斯顿，那里的场景让人想起四月的纽约。上周，美国第四大城市的最大的医院网络表示，其重症监护病房几乎满员。同时，雅培下令要求酒吧和其他非必要的企业再次关门，迫使餐馆客流量减半，并敦促德州人佩戴口罩，就像他通常做的那样。这位重新开放的准先锋成为第一位下令重新封锁的州长。

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.
他在政策上的扭转受到两党的严厉谴责，这是合理的。雅培是一名谨慎的政治家，他倾向于在缓慢的审议之后再发布命令，这反映了他作为法官的背景。他在危机时展现了更多的是推测能力，而不是领导能力。他没有支持他早期听从的当地官员的意见，而是躲在他们后面。他反对这些意见的举动反映了共和党人的一项长达十年之久的运动，即在奥斯汀集中权力以遏制民主城市。即便如此，还是应该对雅培州长宽容一点。