A philosophical question: If no one can hear a tree falling in an uninhabited forest, what about when an unpopular president speaks—is he even heard? Or if public opinion polls consistently show that a sitting president of the United States has a low job approval rating, is he still the president? Technically, George W. Bush holds the office all right. And with 175,000 military combat personnel in the field in Iraq and Afghanistan, he’s definitely the commander-in-chief. But can he lead us here at home?
Perhaps the better way to ask the question is whether anyone who is not in a military uniform will still follow this president. In the past two weeks, Bush has demonstrated strong leadership in trying to deal with the financial crisis panicking Wall Street. But the House of Representatives did not follow him. The Republican Party did not follow him. The American people did not follow him. A bit more than half of the House Democrats followed him, but it was clear from the toxic comments by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that they did so despite Bush, and not because of him. David Brooks, the thoughtful conservative columnist for the New York Times, watched the president perform this week and wrote bluntly this morning that Bush is “out of juice.” I am worried that the problem might be more profound. And more troubling.
Congress and country willingly followed President Bush into Iraq. The decision to go to war was an infinitely more dubious—not to mention more dangerous and expensive—course of action than a $700 billion bailout of Wall Street. But back then, in the fervor following 9/11, Bush had Eisenhower-like poll numbers. His approval rating in the Gallup Poll hovered around 70 percent for many months. In those stirring days, Congress had no problem giving Bush nearly whatever he wanted. Now, not so much. With his poll ratings hovering at 30 percent for the better part of a year, no one wants to follow Bush anywhere. They don’t even want to listen to him anymore. He’s lost the country.
This is not the first time this has happened. I’m thinking of what Herbert Hoover faced during the Great Depression. In his 1933 inaugural address delivered after defeating Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt famously said that the only thing Americans had to fear was fear itself. But President Hoover had been saying the same thing for more than a year. “What we are trying to do,” Hoover explained at one 1932 press conference, “is open the channels of credit so as to dissipate fear and apprehension in the minds of the bankers and the public and businessmen, and thereby restore the people to their normal jobs.” That quote sounds eerily familiar if you've been paying attention to the current crisis, but if you’ve never heard it before don’t worry: most Americans at the time didn’t hear it—or heed it. They had tuned Hoover out, just as so many Americans have tuned Bush out, either for reasons of partisanship or fatigue.
Events this week have demonstrated that if we turn a deaf ear to our president and commander-in-chief, we do so at our own peril. It’s not the public opinion polls that ought to determine whether we follow a president into war—or into the financial markets. It’s the wisdom of the proposed policies. That’s what we ought to be weighing, and only that.
译文:
小布什正在失去民心
问大家一个哲学上的问题：如果没有人能听得到荒无人烟的树林中倒下一棵树的话，那么当一个不再受大家欢迎的总统发表演说时又会怎样呢？--难道他的声音就会被听到吗？ 或者如果公众的意见调查表一直显示一个在职的美国总统拥有很低的支持率，那么他仍然是一个总统吗？从技术上说，布什目前仍旧手握实权。对于那些在伊拉克和阿富汗打仗的175000名部队官兵而言，无疑他还是总司令员。但是在我们国内它还能领导我们吗？
也许这个问题更好的问法是：除了那些穿着军装的人，是否还有人会跟随并支持这位总统。在过去的两周里，布什在处理使华尔街恐慌的经济危机的时候展现除了他高强的领导能力。但是众议院的议员们并没有追随他。并且共和党也没有支持他。更甚者，美国人民也没有理睬他。只有小半部分的民主党议员支持他，但是，从众议院发言人南希讥讽的评论中我们可以清晰地看到他们这么做完全不是因为布什。纽约时报颇有创见的保守派专栏作家大卫波鲁斯，观察了总统先生这个星期的表现后，今早坦率地写道：布什已经出局了。我感到担忧，这个问题可能进一步深化然后更加棘手。
当时国会和整个国家都非常乐意听从布什攻打伊拉克。这个决定的正确性永远处于疑问中，更不用说多少人冒着生命的危险以及多少钱被扔进了火坑，这一系列的行动所花去的代价远比救济华尔街要花的7000亿美元要多。但是回首那个时候，在911刚发生的当口，布什拥有艾森豪威尔般的高支持率。许多个月他的支持率在盖洛普民意调查中显示一直盘旋在70%左右。在那些激动人心的日子里，布什想要提出的任何方案都会得到国会的批准和通过。现在，已经完全不是这样了。随着他一年内最好的支持率也只是低迷的盘旋在30%左右，没有人愿意再去听从布什了。他们甚至不想再听布什说一句话。他失去了整个国家的信任和支持。
这种情况已经不是第一次发生了。我想到了赫伯特胡佛在大萧条中所面对的境况。在1933年他打败了富兰克林罗斯福后在职演说上他发表了的著名言辞：美国人唯一值得去担忧的是恐惧本身带来的忧虑。但是胡佛说那句话说了将近一年多的时间。“我们要试着去做的是”，胡佛在一次1932年的记者发布会上说道，“去打开信贷的渠道以驱散银行家们、公众和生意人心中的恐慌和惧怕，然后从而让人们回到正常的工作岗位上去。”如果你去关注一下最近的经济危机你会对这样的引用语熟悉至极，但是如果你从来没有听说过，不要担心：大多数美国人在那个时候也不去听从或者去留意那些话。当时的人们把胡佛置之于度外，就像是现在的许多美国人也同样地看待布什已经出局了一样，或者是因为党派偏见或者因为心理的疲乏。
这个星期发生的事件也同样告诉我们，如果我们对我们的总统置若罔闻的话，那么我们也是对我们自己的危机充耳不闻。公众的意见调查表是不应当决定我们是否要听从和支持一个总统发动一场战争抑或去拯救华尔街的金融市场。被提起的政策议案的可行性才是我们应当关注的事情。只有这个才是值得我们去衡量的。