如何看待特朗普的崛起 How great republics meet their end

What is one to make of the rise of Donald Trump? It is natural to think of comparisons with populist demagogues past and present. It is natural, too, to ask why the Republican party might choose a narcissistic bully as its candidate for president. This, though, is not just about a party, but about a great country. The US is the greatest republic since Rome, the bastion of democracy, the guarantor of the liberal global order. It would be a global disaster if Mr Trump were to become president. Even if he fails, he has rendered the unthinkable sayable.

怎麼看唐納德•特朗普(Donald Trump)的崛起？人們自然會將他與古往今來善於煽動人心的民粹主義政客做番對比。人們也自然會問，爲何共和黨會選擇一個盛氣凌人的自戀狂作爲其總統候選人。然而，這不僅僅與一個政黨有關，而且還與一個偉大的國家有關。美國是自羅馬以來最偉大的共和國，是民主體制的堡壘，還是全球自由秩序的保障。如果特朗普最終成爲美國總統，那將是一場全球災難。即便失敗，他也讓不可思議之事成爲了人們的談資。

Mr Trump is a promoter of paranoid fantasies, a xenophobe and an ignoramus. His business consists of the erection of ugly monuments to his own vanity. He has no experience of political office. Some compare him to Latin American populists. He might also be considered an American Silvio Berlusconi, albeit without the charm or business acumen. But Mr Berlusconi, unlike Mr Trump, never threatened to round up and expel millions of people. Mr Trump is grossly unqualified for the world’s most important political office.

特朗普宣揚偏執性的妄想，排外而且無知。他的生意包括爲了自己的虛榮建造醜陋的地標建築物。他沒有任何從政經歷。一些人將他比作拉美的民粹主義者。或許還有人認爲他是美國的西爾維奧•貝盧斯科尼(Silvio Berlusconi)，儘管他缺乏魅力和商業頭腦。但是與特朗普不一樣的是，貝盧斯科尼從來不會威脅要抓捕並驅逐數百萬人。特朗普完全不夠格擔任全球最重要的政治職位。

Yet, as Robert Kagan, a neoconservative intellectual, argues in a powerful column in The Washington Post, Mr Trump is also “the GOP’s Frankenstein monster”. He is, says Mr Kagan, the monstrous result of the party’s “wild obstructionism”, its demonisation of political institutions, its flirtation with bigotry and its “racially tinged derangement syndrome” over President Obama. He adds: “We are supposed to believe that Trump’s legion of ‘angry’ people are angry about wage stagnation. No, they are angry about all the things Republicans have told them to be angry about these past seven-and-a-half years”.

然而，正如新保守主義學者羅伯特•卡根(Robert Kagan)在《華盛頓郵報》(The Washington Post)上頗具影響力的專欄中所說的那樣，特朗普也是“共和黨造就的弗蘭肯斯坦怪物”。卡根表示，他是共和黨“野蠻阻擾主義”、政治機構妖魔化、偏執心態以及對奧巴馬總統患上“種族色彩紊亂綜合症”的怪異產物。他補充稱：“我們本來會認爲，支持特朗普的‘憤怒’民衆對薪資停滯感到不滿。實際上並非如此，他們對過去7年半共和黨告訴他們要憤怒的所有事情都感到不滿。”

Mr Kagan is right but does not go far enough. This is not about the past seven-and-a-half years. These attitudes were to be seen in the 1990s, with the impeachment of President CLinton. Indeed, they go back to the party’s opportunistic response to the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Alas, they have become worse, not better, with time.

卡根說得沒錯，但還說得不夠透徹。這與過去7年半無關。這些態度在上世紀90年代就已顯現，當時克林頓總統遭到彈劾。實際上，它們可以追溯至上世紀60年代共和黨對公民權運動的機會主義迴應。唉，隨着時間的推移，這些態度日益惡化而非改善。

Why has this happened? The answer is that this is how a wealthy donor class, dedicated to the aims of slashing taxes and shrinking the state, obtained the footsoldiers and voters it required. This, then, is “pluto-populism”: the marriage of plutocracy with rightwing populism. Mr Trump embodies this union but he has done this by partially dumping the free-market, low tax, shrunken government aims of the party establishment, to which his financially dependent rivals remain wedded. That gives him an apparently insuperable advantage. Trump is no conservative, elite conservatives complain. Precisely. That is also true of the party’s base.

爲何會出現這種情況？答案在於，這是一個致力於減稅和縮減政府規模的富裕捐贈階層獲得其所需的羣衆基礎和選民支持的方式。因而這是“富豪民粹主義”：財閥統治與右翼民粹主義的結合。特朗普是這個聯合體的象徵，但他在一定程度上拋棄了共和黨當權派的自由市場、低稅和縮減政府規模的目標——他的財務上不獨立的競爭對手依然致力於這些目標。這讓他獲得了顯然無可比擬的優勢。保守派精英人士抱怨稱，特朗普並非保守派。確實如此。共和黨的根基也不是保守派。

Mr Trump is egregious. Yet in some respects the policies of his two leading rivals, Senators Cruz and Rubio, are as bad. Both propose highly regressive tax cuts, just like Mr Trump. Mr Cruz even wishes to return to a gold standard. Mr Trump says that the sick should not die on the streets. Mr Cruz and Mr Rubio seem to be not quite so sure.

特朗普是個糟糕透頂的人。然而在某些方面，他的兩個主要競爭對手——兩位參議員特德•克魯茲(Ted Cruz)和馬可•魯比奧(Marco Rubio)也沒拿出像樣的政策。兩人都提議高度遞減的減稅措施，和特朗普一樣。克魯茲甚至希望迴歸金本位制。特朗普表示，病人不應該死在街頭。克魯茲和魯比奧似乎沒有那麼確定。

Yet the Trump phenomenon is not the story of just one party. It is about the country and so, inevitably, the world. In creating the American republic, the founding fathers were aware of the example of Rome. Alexander Hamilton argued in the Federalist Papers that the new republic would need an “energetic executive”. He noted that Rome itself, with its careful duplication of magistracies, depended in its hours of need on the grant of absolute, albeit temporary, power to one man, called a “dictator”.

然而，“特朗普現象”不只是一個政黨的事情，它更是這個國家、因此不可避免也是整個世界的事情。在建立美利堅共和國時，開國元勳們是知道羅馬這個榜樣的。亞歷山大•漢密爾頓(Alexander Hamilton)在《聯邦黨人文集》(Federalist Papers)中主張，新共和國需要一位“充滿活力的行政首腦”。他指出，羅馬精心地複製了“執政官”這個職位，但在要緊時期卻依賴於將絕對（儘管是暫時的）權力賦予一人，即“獨裁官”(dictator)。

The US would have no such office. Instead, it would have a unitary executive: the president as elected monarch. The president has limited, but great, authority. For Hamilton, the danger of overweening power would be contained by “first, a due dependence on the people, secondly, a due responsibility”. During the first century BC, the wealth of empire destabilised the Roman republic. In the end, Augustus, heir of the popular party, terminated the republic and installed himself as emperor. He did so by preserving all the forms of the republic, while he dispensed with their meaning.

美國不會設置這樣的職位。相反，它要設的是一個統一的行政首腦：總統，作爲經選舉產生的最高統治者。總統擁有有限、但巨大的權力。在漢密爾頓來看，權力過大的危險將受制於兩點“一是對人民應有的依賴，二是應負的責任”。在公元前1世紀，帝國的財富令共和政體陷入不穩。最後，平民黨的繼承人奧古斯都(Augustus)終結了共和政體，自立爲皇帝。他保留了所有共和的形式，卻廢除了它們的所有內涵。

It is rash to assume constitutional constraints would survive the presidency of someone elected because he neither understands nor believes in them. Rounding up and deporting 11m people is an immense coercive enterprise. Would a president elected to achieve this be prevented and, if so, by whom? What are we to make of Mr Trump’s enthusiasm for the barbarities of torture? Would he find people willing to carry out his desires or not?

不要武斷地以爲憲法約束一定能比某個民選總統的任期更長久，因爲他既不理解也不相信這些約束。抓捕並驅逐1100萬人就是一種極其高壓的做法。爲了達到這個目標而選上的總統會被阻止嗎？誰來阻止？怎麼看特朗普對酷刑的熱愛？他會看到人們願意執行他的意思嗎，還是不能？

It is not difficult for a determined leader to do the previously unthinkable by appealing to conditions of emergency. Both Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt did some extraordinary things in wartime, but these men knew limits. Would Mr Trump also know limits? Hamilton’s “energetic” executive is dangerous.

對於一位意志堅定的領導人而言，通過宣佈進入緊急狀態而做出以前不可想象之事並不難。亞伯拉罕•林肯(Abraham Lincoln)和富蘭克林•德拉諾•羅斯福(Franklin Delano Roosevelt)都在戰爭時期做出了一些不同尋常的事情，但他們知道限度。特朗普也知道限度嗎？漢密爾頓所謂的“充滿活力”的行政首腦是危險的。

It was the ultra-conservative president Paul von Hindenburg who made Hitler chancellor of Germany in 1933. What made the new ruler so destructive was not only that he was a paranoid lunatic, but that he ruled a great power. Trump may be no Hitler. But the US is also no Weimar Germany. It is a vastly more important country even than that.

1933年，極端保守的德國總統保羅•馮•興登堡(Paul von Hindenburg)讓希特勒(Hitler)成爲了總理。讓這位新的統治者變得如此具有破壞力的不只是因爲他是一個患有偏執妄想症的瘋子，還在於他統治的是一個大國。特朗普或許不是希特勒。但美國也不是當時的魏瑪德國。它要重要得多。

Mr Trump may still fail to win the Republican nomination. But, should he do so the Republican elite will have to ask themselves hard questions — not only how this happened, but how they should properly respond. Beyond that, the American people will have to decide what sort of human being they want to put in the White House. The implications for them and for the world of this choice will be profound. Above all, Mr Trump may not prove unique. An American “Caesarism” has now become flesh. It seems a worryingly real danger today. It could return again in future.

特朗普還是有可能輸掉共和黨總統候選人提名。但如果他獲得提名，共和黨精英們必須捫心自問：怎麼會發生這種事？他們如何做出恰當的迴應？除此之外，美國人民必須做出決定，他們希望讓什麼樣的人入主白宮。這一選擇對於他們以及整個世界的影響將是深遠的。最重要的是，特朗普或許並非僅此一個。一種美國式的“凱撒主義”(Caesarism)如今已經如有實體。這似乎是當今一個令人擔憂的真實危險。未來它還可能重現。