本文选自《经济学人》2018.12.08期“Obituary：George H.W. Bush”

背景资料

瑕不掩瑜，过不盖功。历史不会忘记他。他以他的果断、自信、敢做敢为，以及对美国对中国的友好，还有对世界的独特贡献，必将获得后人的公正评说。

George H.W. Bush

标题赏析

Doing his darnedest

Doing his darnedest字面意思为“尽力而为”，结合文章内容，这是对老布什传奇一生的浓缩概括，通过阅读，可以深切体会到老布什作为一代美国总统，温文尔雅，鞠躬尽瘁，为美国的繁荣不懈努力。同时文章也塑造出老布什永远不愿意展露风头，甘当一位“幕后工作者”的形象。

段落赏析

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Wherever he went, as America’s president or before it, George Herbert Walker Bush usually carried a felt-tipped pen and a supply of notecards. On these he wrote letters. Some were thank-yous; others a clumsy, but courteous（有礼貌；殷勤的）, attempt to get his views across to other people; yet others just a “good to see you” kind of thing. When the time came to write his presidential memoirs, to salve（安慰；减轻） some of that desperate hurt after Bill Clinton thrashed him in 1992, he published instead 600-plus pages of correspondence. They ranged from doting letters to newborn grandchildren to his worries, as a young seaman in 1943, that his girlfriend Barbara, “so darn attractive”, would drop him while he was away; from his attempt to explain the Watergate scandal to his four young sons, to his mortified account of throwing up（呕吐） in 1992 on the Japanese prime minister, “the damnedest experience”. He admitted that some of the letters were nutty（疯狂的）. But they were also of the moment. As he said, “It’s all about heartbeat.”

文章的第一句从一个非常小的细节着手开始描摹老布什：无论他走到哪里，他都始终会携带着一支记号笔和一沓便签纸。他会用这些去写许多的信，有一些是感谢信，另外一些是问候信。这个细节也自然而然引出了后面的内容：他出版了600多页的个人信件，其中也记录了各种有趣的事情：1992年的大选惨败于克林顿；对于新出生的子孙的宠爱；对女友Barbara的思念；向它四个外孙解释水门事件；还有吐了日本首相一身的尴尬……老布什承认一些信件是疯狂的，但却是各种心跳的瞬间。

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In one letter he happened to mention a childhood rebuke(指责) from his mother: “Now, George, don’t walk ahead.” He took her words to heart, staying, for most of his political career, loyally behind and modestly to one side. As chairman of the Republican National Committee in 1974, he stuck by Richard Nixon until it became more urgent to save the party; at which point, he publicly asked him to resign. He felt afterwards as though someone had died. In his eight years as Ronald Reagan’s vice-president, though they had sparred bitterly in the 1980 primaries over Reagan’s “voodoo economics（巫术经济学）” and his callow Hollywood sparkle, he never criticised or upstaged him. During the Iran-contra affair of the 1980s, though present at many salient（重要的） meetings,he declared himself out of the loop, and it was hard to prove otherwise.

这一段着重描写了老布什的家庭，特别是他的母亲对老布什的影响。早在幼年时期，布什就被他的母亲教导：don't walk ahead(别出风头)，布什将此铭记在心中。在布什的政治生涯中，他始终loyally behind and modestly to one side. 文章特别补充了几个有代表性的事件来描摹老布什的性格：为了挽救政党，他公开表示让尼克松总统辞职，老布什感觉到某个人在他心中死掉一样。（he felt afterwards as though someone had died） 在他八年担任里根总统的副总统期间他从没有因为里根总统的“巫术经济学”（降低所得税税率而增加税收收入，里根的实践证明削减税率并不能增加收入。现代经济学家也认为特朗普的经济政策与之类似。）而去指责他或者使他下台（he never criticised or upstaged him）。伊朗门事件（里根政府向伊朗秘密军售武器）中，老布什也申明与他无关（out of the loop）。这些诸多事情，都在呼应布什母亲对布什的教导：don't walk ahead.

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The vision thing
People often supposed him out of the loop in other ways, too: a boy born to privilege, called “Poppy” by his parents, a product of Phillips Academy and Phi Beta Kappa(联谊会，美国大学优秀生社团) at Yale, who was (falsely) rumoured in the 1992 campaign never to have passed a quart of milk through a supermarket scanner. He was a Yankee aristocrat who could have followed his Daddy on to Wall Street（华尔街） but instead became a Texas oil man (the only Texan, growled Speaker Jim Wright, who ate lobster with his chilli), and went on to represent the toniest bit of Houston in Congress. All this, as well as the tennisplaying summers in Kennebunkport, seemed to set him firmly apart from the average Joe（普通人）, though he let it be known as president that his favourite food was pork rinds, and banned from the White House the broccoli（西兰花） his mother had made him eat.

这里讲述了老布什的成长背景，老布什的父母都是高材生。但是老布什也有他特立独行的方面，他并没有跟随父亲进军华尔街，反而选择成为一名油商。他夏天会在Kennebunkport打网球，文中还有趣的还提到了布什讨厌吃西兰花而在白宫闹出的一个闹剧来呼应老布什的特立独行之处（apart from the average Joe）。

西兰花事件：老布什在其担任美国总统时就态度鲜明地声称他不喜欢吃西兰花。1990年，老布什明确公开表示：“我很小的时候就不喜欢吃西兰花，但我妈妈总是要我吃。现在我做了美国总统，再也不要吃西兰花了。”老布什总统甚至还禁止西兰花出现在“空军一号”上。老布什这些“反西兰花”的言行一度引发西兰花种植者强烈不满，他们将大量西兰花运到白宫，以示抗议，媒体一度称之为“西兰花门”。

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With the label “preppy（学院风）” came the tag “wimp（软蛋；窝囊废）”, which infuriated（激怒） him far more. He had had a brave war, enlisting（入伍） at 18 and completing one mission with his aircraft on fire. Later he did not hesitate to send 27,000 troops to dislodge Manuel Noriega from Panama, or to launch a ground war against Saddam Hussein in 1991—declaring victory and pulling out in 100 hours, which pushed his approval ratings（支持率） to 89%. He was not above nasty attack ads in the 1988 campaign, excoriating（批判；痛斥） Michael Dukakis for giving furlough to a black rapist. But Nixon, who hated Ivy Leaguers（常青藤联盟）, seemed to think him soft; Reagan said he lacked spunk（勇气）; and his talk of “Big Mo” and “kicking ass” on the campaign trail often ended in retreat. In 1990 a dust-up with Congress forced him to capitulate on his steely election pledge of “No new taxes”. This, as well as the brief recession of 1990-91, cost him the 1992 election, though even as voters went to the polls the figures for growth were ticking upwards, ushering in almost a decade of prosperity.

这一段着重讲了老布什的一些经历对于他从政的影响，文章在前面几段屡次提到老布什温文尔雅，名校（常青藤）毕业，不愿意出头，这就让一些人给他贴上了“软蛋”的标签，这彻底激怒了老布什，老布什其实是一位极其勇敢的人，他在18岁就放弃了学业，在战斗中即使他的飞机已经着火，他仍然圆满完成了任务。 因为这些经历，造就了老布什是一位“尚武”的人，在他的任期内，美国出兵巴拿马，快速发动并结束海湾战争，这些一度让老布什的支持率高达89%。但这些也造就了老布什谋求连任的失败：只重视军事和外交而忽略了经济。1990-91年美国经历了短期的经济衰退，老布什所发出了竞选口号“没有新的税收”也被国会否决，这些导致了老布什在1992年惨败于克林顿。

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What he lacked, as he more or less admitted, was “the vision thing”. Ideologically, he was flexible: moderate sometimes (indeed, in one Texas race, left of the Democrat), while at others he would traipse（徘徊，游荡） round pandering to conservatives, as George Will cruelly put it, with a thin tinny “arf（汪汪叫）”, like a lap-dog（哈巴狗）. On domestic policy, as president, he inclined to the hard right (prayer in schools, gun rights, anti-abortion), while also loosening immigration policy and expanding the rights of the disabled. Wearing his mild Episcopalian hat, he mentioned a thousand points of light, a kinder, gentler America, and a new breeze blowing away the leaves of an old tree. It was all as vague as it was all deeply hoped for.

这一段讲述了布什的两面，有些时候他是优柔寡断，缺乏远见而趋向于保守的。这种做法也被人辛辣地嘲讽为向哈巴狗一样汪汪叫唤。但是另一方面，布什在国内政策方面却是强硬的右派：在学校做祷告；主张枪支的权利；反对堕胎；放宽移民政策以及主张残疾人的权利。老布什为美国人描述了一个富强，繁荣的美国，这也是所有美国人内心所深深渴望的。

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His forte（专长，强项）, and first love, was foreign policy. He had been ambassador to the un for Nixon, an envoy（大使）to China for Gerald Ford (he and Barbara riding round delightedly on bicycles) and head of the cia, besides, as vice-president, a follower-of-the-hearse at dozens of state funerals. Instinctively, he thought in terms of global power games; fortuitously（幸运的）, his time as president coincided with the end of the cold war, a heady and fascinating moment. With Mikhail Gorbachev he struck up an easy working friendship, and in 1991, in the wake of the Gulf war, he even had a moment of comprehensive vision: a new world order, based not on force but on the rule of law, which America would strongly lead.

本段讲述了老布什最值得骄傲的东西：外交，在尼克松任职期间，他作为联合国大使。在福特总统任职期间，他担任中国特使。在老布什的任期内，他成功结束了美苏冷战，还与戈尔巴乔夫建立了友谊。他也成功建立了以美国为强力主导地位的世界新秩序。

老布什最有名的外交趣事，就是“骑自行车了解北京”。访华期间，他经常和妻子骑着自行车穿行于北京的胡同，由于当年外宾稀少，他们曾引起中国老百姓的围观。

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Such grandiloquence(豪言壮语), like eloquence（雄辩）, was rare in him. He was schooled in modesty, fond of the small behind-the-scenes gesture rather than the large public show. He belonged to a generation that had no patience for today’s blowhards who, putting self before nation, always push themselves forward. But when the times and events demanded he could, perhaps to his own surprise, find the right words and walk confidently ahead.

文末再次呼应了布什的性格特点：没有豪言壮语，没有雄辩的才能，永远默默在幕后工作，当国家需要他挺身而出时，他会站出来挑起大梁，最终找到正确的路并且带领着国家向前。