噢，多么怀念那些烟雾缭绕的密室的日子。党内元老曾一度由州长和陆军将领中选定总统候选人。这些人是他们能够近距离观察数十年、处理公众事务的人。
Oh, for the days of the smoke-filled rooms. Party elders once settled on state governors and army generals as presidential nominees. These were men whom they had been able to observe closely for decades attending to the public’s business.
听听众议员亚历山大·奥卡西奥-科尔特斯对《纽约时报》所说的话吧，历史并不在乎你是否准备好——它抓住你去做，呃，那些你无论如何一直都想做的事，比如全民医保和大幅提高全国最低工资，至于在债务泛滥和国际危险重重的时代，这些事情是否合时宜，则另当别论。
Listen to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tell the New York Times that history doesn’t care whether you’re ready—it seizes upon you to do, er, the thing you always wanted to do anyway, like Medicare for All and an expansive national minimum wage, never mind whether these things are timely in an age of overflowing debt and gathering international dangers.
当然，唐纳德·特朗普是作为自我实现者的总统的化身。如果他在2024年重掌权力后在其至高成就的时刻死去，他将进入万神殿。他随后的总统任期？这可不是一张通往万神殿的门票。[音频] 得克萨斯州会变成蓝色吗，南卡罗来纳州也会吗？
Donald Trump, of course, is the apotheosis of the president as self-realizer. If he had died at his moment of supreme achievement after his 2024 return to power, he would have entered the pantheon. His subsequent presidency? Not a ticket to the pantheon. [audio] Could Texas Turn Blue, and South Carolina, Too?
我立刻意识到了我即将提出的论点中的讽刺意味。他最近的两位民主党对手都是如今无烟密室的产物。在建制派为阻止一个人——特朗普先生——入主白宫而进行的持续十年的斗争中，无烟密室卷土重来。特朗普先生长期以来的战斗从来都不是真正针对任何其他候选人。它是针对建制派集体呕吐物的反抗。
I immediately recognize an irony in the argument I’m about to make. His two latest Democratic opponents were products of the now smoke-free room. The smoke-free room made a big comeback in the establishment’s decade-long battle to keep one man, Mr. Trump, out of the presidency. Mr. Trump’s prolonged war was never really against any other candidate. It was against a collective establishment upchuck.
正如记者乔纳森·斯旺和玛吉·哈伯曼在其书中所记录但未解释的那样，特朗普先生对共和党的主导并不是在他掌权时发生的。它发生在政权更迭的间歇期，当时他的敌人们正当权。
As reporters Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman document but don’t explain in their book, Mr. Trump’s subordination of the GOP happened not while he was in power. It happened during the interregnum, when his enemies were in power.
正是在那时，按社会学对该词的定义，MAGA（让美国再次伟大）才真正成为了一场群众运动，而不仅仅是对某个在选举日表现出来的政客的热情崇拜。最初的预兆可能是2020年4月始于密歇根州兰辛并蔓延到其他州府的反对新冠封锁的自发抗议活动，当时——请注意——特朗普先生对封锁仍持观望态度。
Only then did MAGA become a genuine mass movement, as sociologists define the term, rather than just a cult of enthusiasm for one politician that manifested itself on Election Day. The first premonition may have been the self-organizing protests against Covid lockdowns that began in Lansing, Mich., and spread to other state capitals in April 2020, at a time—note carefully—when Mr. Trump was still on the fence about lockdowns.
真正的凝聚可能发生在2021年1月6日之前后的几天里。在一个代表性的新闻数据库中，MAGA在第一届特朗普总统任期的前两年获得了9985次提及。仅在2024年一年，它就获得了65345次提及。到那时，美国人已经看到了他们从未见过的事情。新闻界与国家安全机构勾结撒谎。美国情报官员干预国内政治。新冠强制措施。2020年非法律手段创建的大规模邮寄投票。在2024年，一场在自己的党内选民头顶上重新扶植一个明显老态龙钟的现任者的阴谋。
The real congealment likely happened in the days before and after Jan. 6, 2021. In a representative news database, MAGA received 9,985 mentions in the first two years of the first Trump presidency. In the single year of 2024, it received 65,345 mentions. By then, Americans had seen things they never saw before. The press lying in conjunction with the national security state. U.S. intelligence officials meddling in domestic politics. The Covid coercions. The extralegal creation of mass mail-in voting in 2020. In 2024, a conspiracy to reinstall a visibly senile incumbent over the heads of his own party’s voters.
最后一次诚实的失误可以说是希拉里·克林顿在2016年对中西部上游的过度下注。然后，不寻常的事情开始了。查克·舒默有一句名言：政客与情报机构为敌是不明智的。
The last honest mistake arguably was Hillary Clinton’s overbetting on the Upper Midwest in 2016. Then something abnormal began. Chuck Schumer famously put it into words: A politician is unwise to make an enemy of the intelligence apparatus.
我在这里记录了新闻界的缺乏勇气和诚实，以及当今某些民主党希望对这些年发生的事情保持的瘫痪般的沉默。
I’ve documented here the lack of courage and honesty of the press, the paralytic silence of certain of today’s Democratic hopefuls about what happened in these years.
检察官杰克·史密斯继续大声宣扬特朗普先生通过再次当选而挫败的起诉的价值。一个更有意思的史密斯版本将会反思他自己在导致那场连任中所扮演的角色。
Prosecutor Jack Smith continues noisily to champion the merits of the prosecutions that Mr. Trump thwarted by being re-elected. A more interesting version of Mr. Smith would reflect on his own role in causing that re-election.
在20世纪70年代的畅销书中，《华盛顿邮报》的大卫·布罗德和英国的亨利·费尔利警告我们，我们会对转向民粹主义、初选式的总统遴选过程感到后悔。
In popular books in the 1970s, the Washington Post’s David Broder and Britain’s Henry Fairlie warned us that we would regret our turn toward a populist, primary-style presidential selection process.
我在2016年曾写过，特朗普当选最终会神化我们赋予自己的那种总统制。我们现在就在这里。每一届政府都会面临不顺的中期选举。并非每一届政府都会面临其跛脚鸭时期拖着可能导致针对其成员的大规模刑事指控以及总统发布的大规模特赦的行为。
I wrote myself in 2016 that a Trump election would end up demystifying the kind of presidency we had given ourselves. Here we are. Every administration faces unhappy midterms. Not every administration faces its lame duckhood dragging behind it acts that may end in mass allegations of criminality against its members and mass pardons issued by the president.
由于贬低了党内机器，由于将总统尊奉为自我实现者，由于赋予了两党中古怪的活动分子阶层（通常被称为政治业余爱好者）权力，我们将永远无法完全回到烟雾缭绕的密室。但伟大的共和国仍然需要一个稳定的精英阶层。种种直觉表明，国会中的民主党人和共和党人将如何应对即将到来的弹劾，将是找到新平衡的关键。
Having downgraded the party machinery, having enshrined the president as a self-realizer, having empowered a zany activist class (often called political hobbyists) in both parties, we’ll never fully revert to the smoke-filled room. But a great republic still needs a stable elite. And every instinct suggests that how Democrats and Republicans in Congress cope with the coming impeachments will be key in finding a new equilibrium.
已故的巴尼·弗兰克的遗著于上个月出版，书名为《通往团结的艰难道路：我们为什么要改革左翼以拯救民主》。
The late Barney Frank’s posthumous book came out last month, “The Hard Path to Unity: Why We Must Reform the Left to Rescue Democracy.”
资深政治作家大卫·施里布曼和琼·韦诺奇大胆地注意到，该书明确将唐纳德·弗兰克的胜选归咎于左翼。在一个在拜登总统任期内达到荒谬高潮的过程中，选民被迫了解到，投票给任何民主党人意味着“一个我们大多数人不同意的小内部少数派将决定政策”。他指的是“觉醒”，对此，身为同gay和自由派的弗兰克比皮特·海格塞斯的任何长篇大论都要严厉。从下个月开始，民主党人可能会发现自己拥有真正的权力，开始消除他们目光短浅地参与造成的损害。
Veteran political writers David Shribman and Joan Vennochi had the temerity to notice that it plainly blames the left for Donald Trump. In a process that reached its absurd climax during the Biden presidency, voters were forced to learn that pulling the lever for any Democrat meant “a small internal minority with whom most of us disagree will dictate policy.”He meant “woke,” about which the gay and liberal Frank is more damning than any Pete Hegseth screed. Starting next month, Democrats may find themselves with real power to begin undoing the damage they so myopically contributed to.